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CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 




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CAN WE STILL BE 
CHRISTIANS? 



BY 



RUDOLF EUCKEN 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF JENA 
NOBEL PRIZEMAN, I908 

AUTHOR OF "THE MEANING AND VALUE OF LIFE," 
"LIFE'S BASIS AND LIFE'S IDEAL," ETC. 



TRANSLATED BY 

LUCY JUDGE GIBSON 

CLASSICAL AND ORIENTAL TRIPOSES, CAMBRIDGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1914 

All rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1914, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1914. 



MAR 5i '1914 



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Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



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PREFACE 

Since a book like this has a decidedly personal note, 
it seems fitting that I should devote a few words to 
setting forth my personal position in the matter. Influ- 
enced by the sombre side of life, I was keenly interested 
in religious problems from very early days ; but at the 
same time I could never come into friendly relation 
with the Churches, and I never thought of entering 
their ministry. Later on, indeed, when philosophy be- 
came my life-work, I sought to suppress the religious 
interest altogether, else I should scarcely have devoted 
myself so assiduously to a study of Aristotle and philo- 
sophical terminology. The old interest, however, would 
not die, and ever and anon it broke out again, even 
in the midst of my philosophical pursuits. But the 
old problem also remained : In the light of our freer 
convictions, what attitude can we take up, and ought 
we to take up, towards Christianity ? For a long time it 
has been on my mind to speak out on this subject, but 
again and again I have postponed the task in the hope 
of being able to treat it more worthily as years brought 
me added experience, and to undertake more confidently 
the no slight responsibility involved in such treatment. 
It seems to me now, however, that the time has at 
length come when I should carry out my intention. 
For, as regards myself, old age draws near, and there 
is no knowing how long I may still be fresh enough for 
work. Then, too, the time is ripe. For the conflict over 
this question has now broken out in earnest, and it be- 
comes a manifest duty to take up a definite position and 



vi PREFACE 

do all I can to further the end for which the conflict is 
being waged. Thus I have resolved to keep silence no 
longer. 

As regards the content of the book, it will scarcely 
commend itself to everyone, even leaving party-feeling 
out of account. Where the problem is so deep-rooted 
in the personal life, every man has his own particular 
questions and preferences, and what seems too little to 
one will be too much for another. So in justification of 
my method of arranging and unfolding the argument, 
let me make the following brief observations. Many 
perhaps will be of opinion that the philosophical expo- 
sition occupies too large a space and wanders too far 
from the main problem. But it was nevertheless quite 
indispensable in order to give a firm support to my own 
convictions, so that I might not merely set one opinion 
against another, — a proceeding which makes discussion 
of this kind so stale and unprofitable. Many again 
would have liked a more detailed treatment and more 
definite suggestions as regards the distinctively religious 
problems. But we are of opinion that the time for this 
is not yet ripe. It is important first of all to come to 
an agreement as to the main direction of our quest, to 
sketch the outlines of a religious thought-world, and 
to show that besides tying down religion to a creed, or 
allowing it to evaporate in subjective sentimentalism, 
in the manner so popular to-day, there is still another 
course, — we purposely avoid calling it a middle course, 
because in this matter there is no question of compro- 
mise. How far this course will take us and what fur- 
ther problems we shall find upon the road, it is for the 
future to determine and our own united effort. 

RUDOLF EUCKEN. 
Jena, October, 1911. 



TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 

The Translator wishes to express her sincerest thanks 
to the Rev. Dr. Charles Strong, Melbourne, for his kind- 
ness in reading through the proof-sheets and making 
many most valuable criticisms and suggestions, and also 
to her husband, Professor Boyce Gibson of the Mel- 
bourne University, for his unfailing sympathy and help. 

Melbourne, December, 1913. 



vn 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Introduction 



PAGE 
I 



5 



22 



A. Justification of the Question: 

I. What is Christianity and what are its demands? 

II. What resistance does Christianity encounter to 
day? 

III. What reasons are there for refusing to reject Chris- 
tianity? 49 

(a) Attitude towards the world ... 52 

(&) The valuation of human nature . . 60 

(c) The inward shaping of work ... 74 

B. Foundation of the Answer: 

I. Dawn of a new life 85 

(a) The problem 85 

(J?) The solution ...... 89 

II. Movement towards religion 99 

(a) Universal religion ..... 99 

(b) Characteristic religion . . . .114 
(V) Retrospect and summary . . .127 

C. Development of the Answer: 

Preliminary considerations 132 

I. The just claims of Christianity and its capacity for 

renewal 139 

Summary 188 

II. The impossibility of a reform within the existing 

Churches 196 

{a) Catholicism 196 

(b) Protestantism 201 

III. The indispensableness of a new Christianity . 206 



IX 



CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 



CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

INTRODUCTION 

A sharp division runs to-day through Christendom, 
destroying its unity and endangering all the strength 
and truth of its life. On the one hand, the traditional 
religion is revered, on the other, rejected; outwardly, 
its stability is unimpaired; inwardly, it is convulsed 
with the throes of upheaval. In most countries Chris- 
tianity still, to all appearance, maintains its old position, 
and the political authorities are usually ready to lend 
their support to the ecclesiastical. But over and above 
such formal recognition, Christianity still remains to 
countless souls an anchorage in the storms of life and 
a comfort in its trials ; it is still a prolific source of self- 
sacrificing love and loyal devotion to duty ; it still finds 
many who are ready to live and die in its service. 

But despite all its reputation and influence, Chris- 
tianity is being assailed by a passionate movement of 
protest which is growing in intensity and carrying all 
before it. It is not the tame and timid doubt which all 
ages know so well, not a mere failure on the part of in- 
dividuals to live up to the heroic mood which religion 
requires of them. No ! The antagonism that meets it 
to-day goes much deeper and is vastly more dangerous. 
Unbelief was once confined to the few, and those chiefly 
in the upper strata of society; to-day it lays hold on 
large masses of people, plunging them now into dull in- 



2 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

difference, now into a passion of iconoclastic hate. 
Figures prove conclusively that the interest in church 
services and observances is constantly decreasing 
and that the faithful are rapidly becoming a minority. 
In our great cities — in Germany, at least — every 
attack or even aspersion on Christianity meets with 
rapturous applause. Is such treatment of religion — 
the religion we ourselves profess — a natural and normal 
occurrence, and can we find any parallel to it outside of 
Christianity ? 

Unbelief, moreover, is no longer directed merely to 
particular features and aspects of Christian thought. 
It has extended over the whole area, so that Christianity 
itself is called in question and not merely certain of its 
dogmas and institutions. Again, this unbelief, abandon- 
ing its old defensive attitude, has become more and more 
aggressive in character. It marshals its several forces 
in close array and moves them forward together in battle- 
line. It is not content with being merely tolerated: it 
longs to rule. It organises its adherents and confronts 
Christianity with big constructive programmes. In this 
respect the monistic movement is an important sign 
of the times. But how could such a union of forces 
take place at all unless, away behind individual opinion, 
there were distinctive tendencies of civilisation actively 
at work, putting forward new claims, indicating new 
paths, and entirely reversing the whole trend of life ? It 
is only in virtue of its at-one-ness with the spirit of the 
age that this movement of protest can justify its exist- 
ence and indulge the hope of final victory. It stands, 
and feels that it stands, for a necessary renewal of life. 

Thus we live in an age of transition, of struggle be- 
tween opposing systems. We are forced to ask the mean- 



INTRODUCTION 3 

ing of this schism, this threatened disruption of human 
life, and to find out where we are to look for the means 
of healing it. Does this mighty countermovement, — 
still apparently gathering force, — betoken the ap- 
proaching dissolution of Christianity, the end of its 
power ? Does it mean that our spiritual life must seek 
a new centre ? Or does all the commotion and upheaval 
only point to the need of an inward renewal of Chris- 
tianity ? Do the convulsions of to-day denote the death- 
struggle of an old world-power or are they only the throes 
of a new birth ? Can Christianity find room and value 
for all that is of genuine worth in the experiences and 
demands of our present-day development, or are they 
rocks on which it is destined to founder ? 

This is a question which not only determines the main 
drift of our common work but deeply affects the life 
and soul of each individual. A question of this kind, 
once clearly put, cannot without grave loss remain long 
unsettled : it demands a definite answer. An effective 
answer cannot, however, be given save when the great 
problem is treated not as a party matter, but as a con- 
cern of the whole human race, not with wearisome dis- 
cussion of isolated detail, but as a whole and with con- 
stant reference to the real roots of the opposition we are 
dealing with. We may surmise that mere theoretical 
consideration will not suffice and that a further active 
development will be necessary. With the view, however, 
of reaching the point where we can see what direction 
this should take and where a vital decision of the whole 
man is essential, we shall do well to make a quiet survey 
of our present position in the order of the world's de- 
velopment, and to weigh its merits impartially. Let us 
then spare no effort to secure that the greatness of the 



4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

problem shall to some extent be reflected in the manner 
of our treatment. Our theme is both serious and difficult. 
He who fears to look at such questions frankly will do 
well to hold aloof from them. Mere hedging and trim- 
ming are powerless to rescue us from the present in- 
tolerable division of our spiritual forces. 



A. JUSTIFICATION OF THE QUESTION 
I. What is Christianity and What are its Demands ? 

To take a great religion with its wealth of varying 
forms, its complexities and oppositions, its constant in- 
teraction with the conditions of the age, and to attempt 
to reduce it to a simple conceptual formula, is a task 
which savours of the impossible and can only tend to 
encourage insipidity and vagueness. It is, however, 
quite a different matter to point out certain pervading 
characteristics which are common to all its various forms 
and thence proceed to outline a general picture that can be 
intelligibly grasped. Such a picture is indispensable, not 
only in order to mark off this religion from other re- 
ligions, but also to bring out clearly its essential nature 
and to distinguish satisfactorily between its primary and 
its secondary characteristics. Thus, if we wish to set 
our inquiry upon a sound footing, we must first of all 
seek to construct a general picture of Christianity, and 
in doing this we shall try to proceed step by step from 
its more universal qualities to such as are unique and 
distinctive. 

i. Christianity makes religion the sovereign mistress 
of man's life and destiny, revealing a new world other 
than that of his immediate environment and claiming 
for it his whole-hearted devotion. Religion, on this 
view, is no mere extra, — the embroidery of a life whose 
substance is already given : it is the solution of an in- 

5 



6 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

tolerable contradiction ; it effects a complete reversal of 
all existing values. Man becomes conscious of this new 
world as of all things the most supreme and certain, 
needing no evidence from any other tribunal, but itself 
constituting the tribunal before which everything else 
must justify itself. God is not viewed from the stand- 
point of the world, but the world from the standpoint of 
God. This break with the immediate environment and 
transference to a new centre was natural to the declining 
days of the ancient world, — to a period which had 
fallen out with the existing condition of things, finding 
there no worthy aim, cherishing no hope of improvement, 
and thus ready to welcome the revelation of a new world, 
the disclosure of a fresh spring of life. The revolution ef- 
fected by Christianity must, from this point of view, have 
appeared as the fulfilment of an irresistible demand. 
2. Christianity is a religion of the spirit, that is to say, 
it finds its new world in a supra-sensible invisible king- 
dom. It believes in a purely spiritual God as the source 
and sustainer of all reality, so that the renewal of life 
which it demands is pre-eminently spiritual in kind. 
Nature, as the creation of God, revealing His splendour 
through all her works and ways and praising Him with 
a thousand tongues, has to subserve the aims of spirit. 
Thus the miracles which attend the birth of Christianity 
cause no offence whatsoever. This exaltation of the 
spirit above the visible world was in the first instance 
the achievement of Judaism, won through much storm 
and stress; but Greece also was gradually led by the 
discipline of experience to abandon the sense-world 
which she had loved so singly and transfigured with all 
the glories of her art, and to take refuge in an inward 
life which transcended the world. The history of her 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 7 

philosophy shows very clearly the gradual shifting of 
life's centre from the visible to an invisible world. 
What a gulf there is, what a change in life, between the 
days of the early Greek philosophy with its crude, bold 
animism, and its final stages as represented by Plotinus 
with whom everything visible was a mere allegory of an 
invisible order ! Christianity, however, did not merely 
take up a movement which was already stirring in the 
ancient world ; it carried it on to a further stage of de- 
velopment. That antiquity had by no means freed its 
conception of the Godhead from a tincture of naturalism, 
— from an " earthy residuum," — is sufficiently attested 
by the fact that even its closing epoch could regard the 
sun, sol invictus, as the supreme manifestation of the 
Godhead. A relic of naturalism also remained in its 
conception of moral activity, particularly in its manner 
of conceiving the moral motive. It was Christianity that 
first weeded out all this alien admixture and made pure 
spirituality completely supreme over the world. Thus 
more than any other religion it is the religion of the 
absolute spirit. 

3. Christianity is a religion of redemption, not a 
religion of law; that is to say, it makes the critical 
turning-point, the winning of the new world, depend not 
on man's resolve or exertions, but on divine grace meet- 
ing him and lifting him upwards, grace that does not 
merely second his own effort, but implants within him 
fresh springs of action and makes his relationship to God 
the source of a new life, a new creature. For man as we 
find him has wandered too far from goodness and become 
too weak in spiritual capacity to be capable of bring- 
ing about his own conversion ; all his hope of salvation 
depends on God and from Him must he receive every- 



8 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

thing. Thus deep humility and joyous gratitude be- 
come, as it were, pillars of the new life ; but they are 
genuine only when they are the result of a great upheaval 
and an inward transformation. This state of mind 
was natural to the condition of the age which witnessed 
the rise of Christianity. Even the educated man felt 
sorely oppressed by the contradictions of existence, and 
his very soul was divided within him. In particular, he 
felt the burden of the contradiction between a refined 
sensuality and a spirituality which, though highly de- 
veloped, was yet inert and ineffective. Thus he found 
himself in thrall to mysterious powers, which he despised 
but could not shake off. There ensued a contempt for 
mankind which left only one possible alternative : either 
complete despair, abandonment of all ideals, or hope of 
supernatural aid, of redemption through the grace of 
God. 

4. The redemption which Christianity promises is 
ethical, not intellectual, in kind. It conceives its task 
very differently from the Indian religions : its object 
is not to transplant men from the world of deceitful 
sense into that of true Being, to lead them from a realm 
of distraction and perishableness into changeless unity: 
its main problem is concerned rather with the struggle 
between good and evil. It finds that the world which 
God created good has through its own act fallen into evil 
and is now impregnated with evil. Only divine love 
can free it from its present corruption, effecting the 
freedom through an act of deliverance. For it opens 
up a kingdom of the children of God, where all hearts 
beat in unison, all discord ceases, and purest bliss is 
attained. In virtue of this new kingdom the world 
gains a new value ; it is to be transfigured, not shunned. 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 9 

Thus there is no repudiation of the world in itself, but 
only of its present condition: the No is not final, but 
only the gateway to a triumphant Yes. 

On this view the instrument of conversion is not a 
miraculous illumination, in which illusions fall away 
suddenly like scales from before the eyes, but a total 
change of disposition, a primaeval uprush of new life. 
All human action rests upon divine deed and is in fact 
impossible without it. There is a stern refusal to admit 
any capacity in man to achieve anything in his own 
strength. But, nevertheless, that which constitutes the 
very kernel of reality is not some process which follows 
fixed inevitable laws : it is rather free will and free action. 
The world's history fulfils itself in great deeds; this 
indeed is what transmutes it from a mere process into 
a genuine history. And inasmuch as these deeds are 
interconnected, and unite in mutual interplay to form 
a complete whole, reality becomes transformed into an 
ethical drama. This drama, moreover, extends its 
action right into the soul of the individual, which has 
its own private struggles to undergo, its own experiences 
of renewal; thus alone does each soul acquire a dis- 
tinctive history of its own. It was Christianity that 
first made this history possible. Otherwise it could 
never have degraded all outward events into mere 
secondary trifles in comparison with care for the soul, — 
even as Jesus himself said : " What shall it profit a man 
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " 

The fundamentally ethical character of Christianity 
brings with it yet further developments. It secures for 
the first time the superiority of spirit to nature, no mat- 
ter how refined the conception of nature may be. The 
experience of the race shows clearly that wherever the 



io CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

ethical character of life has been in any way weakened, 
the superiority of spirit has at once become matter of 
question. But the value attached to this ethical 
character gives to man, as a being capable of personal 
decision and independent action, a pre-eminent position 
in the universe : it lifts him far above all nature. This 
fundamental conviction, moreover, has a further effect 
in determining the relation between man and man : it 
tends to subordinate differences of actual achievement 
to the one problem which is common to men qua men. 
From the equality of all men before God there has grown 
up the idea of their equal value one with another, and 
the emphasis laid on truth of disposition as more im- 
portant than all greatness of outward achievement means 
that man is for ever freed from the tyranny of fate. 

Not only does the ethical problem thus become central 
for the whole life ; it gives it a general character which 
is quite distinctive. Life becomes pre-eminently a 
relationship of the soul, as it concentrates itself into unity, 
with the Godhead realised as living and present ; man 
communes with God, as an "I" with a "Thou"; and 
just as life acquires now for the first time a purely 
spiritual freedom and complete inwardness, so also it 
assumes a more distinctly personal as opposed to an 
impersonal character, and thereby gains immeasurably 
in spiritual depth and warmth, a warmth which infuses 
the whole outlook on the world and animates all our 
conceptions of it. But if in this respect Christianity 
made a decided advance upon antiquity, it was yet only 
natural in view of the condition and demands of the 
age that it should give the religious problem an ethical 
trend. For the deep dissatisfaction which at that time 
pervaded all more seriously minded people had gradually 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY n 

intensified into a torturing sense of guilt. Dread of 
mysterious powers and burdensome responsibilities was 
continually gathering force, while at the same time 
there was growing up a longing, nay a passionate craving, 
for atonement and justification, for reinstatement in 
a condition of innocence and goodness. This was con- 
genial soil for the gospel of ethical redemption which 
Christianity offered. The strict adherence to this 
ethical character must have given it in its early days an 
enormous advantage over all other competitors. 

5. But though all this brings out the peculiar and 
distinctive character of Christianity, yet it only serves 
as outline and introduction to that which constitutes its 
main content and has given it its world-wide power. 
There is a deep rift, — for this is how the problem has 
defined itself, — between God and man. Man's self- 
will has renounced God and asserted itself against Him. 
Since this hostility has been productive of his greatest 
misery, the restoration of harmony, at-one-ment with 
God, has become the question of questions, — a question, 
however, which can receive its solution only through 
divine love and grace. The precise method of this 
solution is the matter that now concerns us : theoretical 
considerations will not give it to us ; we must look for it 
in the actual facts. Now Christianity offers us at this 
crucial point two sets of facts, one of which lies wholly 
within the sphere of human experience, while the other 
opens up considerations of a metaphysical and cosmical 
character. The former consists of Jesus' proclamation 
that the kingdom of God is come and that men are God's 
children ; the latter is the incarnation of God in Christ 
Jesus for the redemption of mankind. In the history 
of Christianity these two sets of facts have been woven 



12 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

together and used for a common end, but the more 
important place has been given to the Incarnation. 
The lifework of Jesus is affiliated with the Incarnation, 
not so much through the detail of his actual life-history 
as through his death, so that his death has seemed to be 
more potent in its influence than all the activity of his 
lif e (Christi mors potentior quam vita) . 

The idea of God becoming man had an irresistible 
fascination for those times. It seemed the only possible 
solution of a conflict which had become intolerable. 
The sanctity of the moral order had been most seriously 
violated through man's sin, — sin not easily to be can- 
celled or blotted out, but serious enough to require a 
very complete atonement. As it is impossible for man 
to provide such atonement from his own resources, God 
alone can bring help. Yet man must somehow con- 
tribute his share : the help cannot come to him from 
outside as something completely alien. There remains 
then no other way than that God should descend among 
men, take on human form, become genuine man; that 
thus in his redeeming love he may take upon himself 
the guilt for which he is in no way responsible and offer 
the necessary atonement by his sacrifice in our stead. 
Only so does it seem possible for man to regain access 
to God. God is no longer wroth with our sin but has 
reopened the fountain of His grace. In no other way 
could love and justice, gentleness and earnestness be 
completely reconciled. Justice is satisfied and the 
majesty of the law vindicated, but love retains supremacy, 
and thus in the end Christianity declares itself as the 
religion of an all- triumphing love. 

It is natural, therefore, that the union of God and man 
in one person, and the redemption thus effected, should 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 13 

become the central dogma of Christianity. All its 
other distinctive dogmas, such as the Trinity, the 
miraculous birth, the bodily resurrection, the ascension, 
and so forth, are merely inevitable corollaries. There is 
something exceedingly logical in the development of 
these dogmas. There is no stopping midway; he who 
wishes to retain one must accept the others. 

In this way the idea of mediation which had so great 
a hold upon that period received its most complete ex- 
pression. It was an idea which had its origin in the 
sharp distinction, — then so strongly upheld, — between 
God and man. The Godhead could not be raised too 
high above the corruption of the world and the foulness 
of man; it could not enter into direct touch with this 
lower sphere. If a connexion were desired, there must 
be between-grades, there must be mediation; and this 
could not be more thoroughly and effectively realised 
than in the form of the God-man uniting both natures 
in his own person. 

At a later stage of our enquiry we shall have to criticise 
this doctrine under various aspects, but first and fore- 
most we must do justice to the profound influence it 
has exerted over mankind. Here we have a deed, cosmic 
in its reach, taking shape as a historical event. This 
particular piece of history thus acquired a metaphysical 
character and linked itself with the ultimate depths 
of reality. Life, by participating in these depths, gained 
a fixity which was proof against all doubt. For if the 
Godhead had appeared in flesh and blood among us, 
who could doubt any more ? Who needed to probe any 
deeper as to whether the salvation thus offered was 
sufficient? Human nature, through its union with 
the Godhead, became lifted up with it to the highest 



i 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

nobility ; all pettiness, need, and guilt fell away from it ; 
even death itself lost all power over it. And men owed 
all this grandeur and blessedness to saving love which 
shrank neither from the most bitter suffering nor from 
the darkness of death. 

A conception of life which united thus closely human 
and divine, time and eternity, the visible and the in- 
visible world, might easily have lost itself in some re- 
mote intangible Beyond. But this danger was steadily 
counteracted by the influence of Jesus' personality and 
work. For here everything tended towards spiritual 
warmth and plain humanity. The Christian conviction 
of love as a world-ruling power was embodied in a per- 
sonality which in its union of childlike simplicity with 
heroic greatness, outward poverty with inward loftiness, 
tenderest spirituality with world-compelling power, 
youthful joyousness with impressive seriousness, has 
made a deep and lasting impression upon humanity 
and stands out clear and vivid in the minds of all 
Christian believers. What a different picture this is 
in its vitality and fulness, from that of the Eastern 
Asiatic sages in their tranquil goodness and meditative 
composure ! To this must be added the tragic fate of 
Jesus, stirring human feeling to the most opposite 
emotions, from irrepressible grief to assured and tri- 
umphant joy. At the same time the belief that in him 
God had become incarnate placed him, with his life 
and sufferings, on quite another level from that of any 
merely human personality however distinguished it 
might be. In the light of that larger context his life 
became the ideal type of all human life ; all his individual 
characteristics acquired an exemplary significance, and 
it became possible that round the struggle, sorrows, and 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 15 

triumphs of this one personality there should grow up 
an emotional cult which was yet clear from any charge 
of idolatry. 

Thus these two sets of facts have combined to give 
Christianity its distinctive form. The outstanding 
feature which distinguishes it from all other religions is 
that here a historical occurrence, falling within the 
cognisance of our own experience, has at the same time 
a metaphysical and cosmical significance : history and 
metaphysics are inseparably blended. Even though 
ecclesiastical dogma may be exclusively concerned with 
cosmic truth and may disregard the more familiar 
detail of the life of Jesus, yet this latter has continually 
exercised an invigorating rejuvenating power over 
Christian life, and enabled it to feel its way back from all 
the complexity of human conditions to a plain straight- 
forward simplicity, and from all dependence on externals 
to a pure inwardness. The Christian life has always 
been able to draw its inspiration from 

" Der reinen reichen Quelle, 
Die nun dorther sich ergiesset, 
Uberniissig, ewig helle 
Rings durch alle Welten fliesset." * {Goethe) 

6. The Christian dispensation is regarded as purely 
a gift from God to man. Man's function in regard to 
it is merely receptive, and the attempt to make life's 
great turning-points depend on him is most strongly 
deprecated. But once God's kingdom has been firmly 
established in the human soul, then the collective effort 

1 That fountain ever pure, abundant, 
Whose source is hid from mortal sight, 
Circling through the worlds unnumbered 
Radiant with eternal light. 



16 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

of mankind is called upon to hold fast the truth that has 
been revealed, to proclaim it far and wide and to make 
it fully effective through the whole field of human rela- 
tionships. This task is rendered peculiarly difficult 
by the fact that, according to Christian conviction, 
humanity is far from yielding easily to the divine revela- 
tion ; on the contrary, it offers a tough resistance, so 
that Christianity, despite all its inner superiority, has 
to struggle unceasingly. Thus arises the necessity for 
a special society to uphold the Christian ideal in the 
face of all hindrances and attacks. The religious com- 
munity, the Church, as the protectress and champion 
of sacred things, becomes a main article of Christian 
belief. Over against man's external needs, the things 
that are necessary to his natural and social self-preserva- 
tion, it holds before him, effectively present to his con- 
sciousness, an essentially higher existence, a life eternal, 
for which it claims his energies and his heart. Inasmuch 
as the Church is guided by the spirit of God, man, in 
virtue of his connexion with it, may feel himself to be a 
co-worker in the kingdom of God. But true though it 
be that earthly life thus becomes vested with a serious 
task, the truth only holds when that life is viewed in 
the light of a supra-sensuous world. And thus, too, it 
comes about that man's hopes and strivings never find 
satisfaction in the world that now is. A deep longing 
compels him to reach forward beyond its imperfections 
to a state of perfection which he experiences beforehand 
in the joys of anticipation, a state in which evil is com- 
pletely vanquished and doubt is altogether cancelled. 
This transcendence of the present world and expecta- 
tion of a new world is an essential feature of Christianity. 
When we survey the gradual steps by which Chris- 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 17 

tianity has unfolded itself to us and seek to summarise 
what we have seen of its originality and power, we are 
forced to admit unreservedly that it holds a pre-eminent 
and even unique position. We find universal and par- 
ticular characteristics working effectively together and 
combining to form a completed whole. The universal 
element gives comprehensiveness and breadth ; the par- 
ticular, steadiness and concentration. The purpose of 
the whole system is in no wise limited to merely inter- 
preting, elucidating, and improving a world already 
given ; it is not a system of mere doctrines and concepts, 
but it brings a fresh development of reality ; it unlocks 
a stream of hitherto unexplored fact. Thus it has not 
merely given man this or that new outlook, not merely 
carried on to a further stage of development powers 
that were already existing, but it has renewed him in 
the whole of his being and lifted him on to a new level. 
Christianity, being thus constituted, may look for veri- 
fication in the first instance to its achievements alone, 
and does not need to found its assertions on universal 
truths of the reason. Having created a thought- world 
out of its own resources, it must proceed to uphold it 
without help from outside, and it is proud of this inde- 
pendence. We may even assert that by basing reality 
on man's free will and act, it has an unavoidable element 
of irrationality ; it can never be compressed into logical 
formulas, though its irrationality is indeed something 
very different from mere unreason. Thus Christianity 
develops a special organ in man for the perception of its 
truths. Over against knowledge it puts faith, a concept 
in which the negative element is more obvious than the 
positive, while its closer definition offers the very great- 
est difficulty. 



18 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

As regards content, the main thing in Christianity is 
the creation of a purely inward world formed out of the 
relationship of spirit to spirit, of personality to person- 
ality. With the creation of this world Christianity 
transcends everything that has been effected by natural 
and social self-preservation and every other kind of 
civilising agency. For the first time it gives reality a 
depth in which it rests secure, and it reduces that which 
previously constituted man's whole world to a mere 
part of it and even then only an external part. It is a 
grave misunderstanding when the new world of Chris- 
tianity is represented as being mainly an " other world,'' 
whereas it is rather meant to constitute the firm basis 
of all fife. It does indeed transcend the sphere of sense- 
experience, failing to find there the goal of its striving, 
but this transcendence it possesses from the outset, 
and the eternity which it proclaims is already present 
and effective even here. 

Closely connected with this achievement of pure and 
independent inwardness is the extraordinary compre- 
hensiveness of Christianity, its power of assimilating 
the oppositions of human life and transcending them 
without in any way weakening them, oppositions such as 
those of human and divine, time and eternity, joy and 
pain, worldliness and childlike simplicity, peaceful 
repose of heart and tremendous fervour when at conflict 
with the world. It is precisely this power of transcend- 
ing oppositions which gives Christianity so much inward 
breadth and depth, and makes it into an organised whole 
of reality. Measured against such profundity, all other 
religions may well seem superficial. 

This assimilation and transcendence of contrasts is 
especially conspicuous in the relation of Christianity to 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 19 

the problem of optimism and pessimism. Christianity 
is indeed very far from any immediate affirmation of life's 
good. Not only has its tenderness of soul made men 
more sensible to suffering, but the emphasis it lays 
upon sin has actually heightened the suffering and 
intensified the pain. A light-headed attitude is out of 
the question. But though suffering is thus assimilated 
and made an intimate portion of the life of Christianity, 
yet it is always as the road along which we press to a 
triumphant Yea, to a state of perfection and blessedness, 
so that the sufferers can be extolled as blessed. Suffering 
indeed becomes consecrated by the fact that God Himself 
shares in all its bitterness and is peculiarly near to the soul 
that suffers. Therefore suffering, though spiritually 
transcended, is not abolished, but remains as an integral 
part of life, with the function of constantly leading it 
back upon its own depths. Since, however, Christianity 
came to man in the form of glad tidings (evayyeXiov) f 
its fundamental note is in last resort one of joy, though 
a joy which has gone through life's needs and struggles 
and come out victorious. Thus a spirituality at once 
radical, militant, and triumphant, binds the Christian 
world together. Light in darkness, brave advance in the 
face of a hostile world, — this is its sign and seal. " That 
is spiritual power, which rules amid foes and is strong in 
all oppression. And what does this mean but that 
strength is perfected in weakness, and that I can make 
all things minister to my salvation, so that cross and 
death are forced to serve me and work with me for the 
saving of the soul" (Luther). 

All the gain that accrues to life from such a deepening 
and renewing process must also belong fully to each 
individual human being. The great facts of salvation 



V 



20 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

are true for him too. As an object of divine love and 
sorrow he can never more be lonely and forsaken ; his 
doings can never again be unheeded and ignored. And 
once lifted on this tide of infinite love, the separate sec- 
tions of society can no longer live side by side without 
touching each other as is otherwise inevitable : no 
longer are they separated by rigid class-barriers and 
indifference to each other's welfare. The walls of par- 
tition break down, and therewith a new life opens out, 
a life of sympathetic co-operation and mutual under- 
standing, free from all taint of narrow egoism. Justice, 
moreover, can no longer keep its old position as controller 
of life and action. For justice measures reward by 
service rendered and gives unto each man according to 
his deserts, lifting the strong and depressing the weak ; 
whereas now man is saved from his bitter need and called 
into infinite blessedness quite without any merit of his 
own. And as divine love does not stop to weigh and 
measure, so man also in his relations with his fellow-man 
must show an unmeasured love, without any question 
of merit or reward. 

That Christianity, with all its tenderness of soul, yet 
shows no lack of outwardly directed energy, and that it 
has vitally altered the whole condition of the human 
race, is the incontrovertible testimony of history. In 
the closing decades of antiquity, particularly from the 
beginning of the third century, Christianity afforded a 
firm anchorage to a weary and hopeless humanity, 
inspiring it with fresh courage for the tasks of life. It 
was the spiritual moulder and educator of new nations ; 
in the golden age of medievalism it constructed a com- 
prehensive all-inclusive life-synthesis, and in modern 
times it has kept alive a spiritual depth combined with 



REQUIREMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 21 

high ethical aims in face of a civilisation of quite other 
tendencies, thus effectively supplementing its deficiencies. 
Even on the plane of history, then, Christianity is an 
impressive actuality which has penetrated the whole 
texture of human society no less than it has sunk into the 
deepest recesses of the human soul, thereby acquiring 
a confident superiority to all changes of mood and 
opinion. 

While all this is true, we yet cannot deny that the 
history of Christianity, as viewed from outside, is often 
far from edifying. We hear of conflicts between 
Church and State, disputes within individual churches 
as also between one church and another, of inquisitions 
and heresy-hunts, of ambition, self-interest, and hypoc- 
risy. The whole may well seem to be the veriest carica- 
ture of Christianity, and we can easily understand 
the harsh judgment which could fall from the lips of 
even a man like Goethe: "The whole history of the 
Church is a mish-mash of error and violence." And 
yet such judgments are unjust. For they take into 
consideration outward manifestations only and ignore 
what is transpiring within. Thus they fail to appreciate 
the anchorage and peace that Christianity has afforded 
to many a soul, the strength and joy which it has inspired 
amid the hindrances and exigencies of human life. 
They fail to realise how it has opened up the depths of 
soul-life and helped to bring men spiritually nearer to 
each other. How much all this has meant and how 
fertile a source of purest inspiration it has proved, is 
clearly and strikingly shown in Christian art. Sublime 
cathedrals and inspired pictures, religious poetry and 
religious music, all combine to show that Christianity 
has not merely touched men on the outside or been 



22 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

imposed upon them from without, but that it has won 
the allegiance of their souls, and secured a service which 
was the outcome of a full and unbiassed conviction. 
Thus despite all obscuration and disfigurement, — 
inevitable under human conditions, — Christianity has 
always maintained its position as a sovereign life-power, 
the upholder of a new world, a mistress of souls, and 
thence of all things human. 

n. What Resistance does Christianity encounter 

To-day ? 

Generations, nations, and epochs came and went; 
new conditions dawned, new problems arose; and still 
Christianity kept its old supremacy, often by a process 
of adroit adjustment. It seemed like a tower which 
no storm could touch because it was founded upon a 
rock. But even Christianity has now come to a point 
where it is forced into a position of defence and its foun- 
dations are shaken. Let us see how this has come 
about and how it is to be explained. 

Christianity did not approach man with mere theories 
about the world : it introduced him into a great realm 
of fact, transcending alike all argument and all the ca- 
price of varying moods. This does not mean, however, 
that Christianity possesses for all time the compelling 
force and authority of its early days. The facts of 
Christianity are of the spiritual order; they cannot 
be imposed upon man by compulsion from without; 
they require the seeing eye and the attentive, inclining 
disposition. Man's desire must go out to meet them. 
Life must resolve itself into a question before religion 
can promise the answer. But, as time goes on, other 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 23 

problems may attract men more strongly and divert 
their attention into other channels ; and thus religion 
may fall into the background, becoming less convincing 
and more accessible to doubt. 

The passage of time, moreover, may affect not merely 
our relation to the facts, but also the position which these 
facts occupy in the whole scheme of life. The fact- 
world which lies at the base of a religion like Christianity 
is not content to be just one among others, but claims 
a place of supreme importance and authority. Every- 
thing else in life must be interpreted and appraised with 
reference to this new standard, must be viewed in the 
light of it, and must subserve the aims it imposes. This 
demand created much difficulty from the very outset, 
and Christianity had some hard battles to right in 
support of it. But it held to its point, and in the zenith 
of the Middle Ages had succeeded in evolving an organ- 
isation which brought every department of life under its 
sway and made religion the paramount force in society. 
As time went on, however, we find new facts asserting 
themselves, — facts which do not fit in easily with the 
religious scheme of life and are indeed essentially opposed 
to it. This may not be very serious so long as the new 
development is merely sporadic and does not obtrude 
itself into the foreground of life. But in proportion as 
it becomes more unified and independent, it reveals 
itself ever more clearly as the opponent of the traditional 
order, A conflict arises between one world of thought 
and another; the unity of life is broken up, and that 
which hitherto exercised an uninterrupted lordship is now 
made accountable to another tribunal. An inward change 
is thereby encouraged. Naive acceptance gives place 
to an attitude of criticism. Man looks at things more 



24 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

keenly, puts questions which he never used to think of, 
discovers contradictions where hitherto he has seen 
nothing but complementary truths. In short, the very 
answer that seemed so convincing now becomes itself 
the question. 

In Christianity this process assumes a distinctive 
form and is accentuated by the fact that the very nucleus 
of Christianity is the blending of an essentially historical 
fact with a metaphysical transaction reaching into the 
Eternal. This blending was to constitute the central and 
dominating point of all the world's procedure. Now it is 
a question whether such a union of the historical and the 
eternal can permanently hold. Will it not weaken and 
dissolve as life goes forward and ideas widen out ? Will 
not the mere historic fact prove unequal to sustaining 
the whole fabric of the spiritual world? These are 
questions which await the verdict of the world's expe- 
rience, but the verdict so far seems to be against the 
permanence of such a union. 

The ferment of change and evolution which began 
working at the dawn of our modern period seemed as 
though it could find full room for its activity inside the 
borders of Christianity, without in any way endangering 
its supremacy. The case was altered, however, when 
once life as a whole struck out along new lines which 
surely, though slowly, proved hostile to the claims of 
Christianity. It is precisely this change of orientation 
which gives the modern period its distinctive character 
and marks it off from the old position. We shall pres- 
ently have to consider its distinguishing features more 
closely ; here we can only indicate two points in which the 
main drift of life has been reversed. 

Christianity framed its world in direct antagonism 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 25 

to the world of sense-immediacy, — drawing, indeed, 
a good part of its power from the decisive breach which 
it effected between the two. Our modern life, however, 
attaches great and increasing importance to the world 
of sense-immediacy, bestowing more and more energy 
upon it and making it, to an ever greater extent, the 
centre of all activity. This movement has passed 
through several stages. First there was the attempt to 
overcome the old opposition of God and world by seeking 
the divine element within the world and regarding all 
its vitality and beauty as a reflex of divine splendour. 
This is panentheism, the theory which dominates all 
the creative art of the Renaissance. Then little by little 
Divinity laid aside its transcendent majesty and became 
so intimately blent with the world that the two melted 
into one single reality. Thus was it in the pantheism 
which inspired the creative activity of great poets and 
thinkers, and constituted a mighty incentive towards mak- 
ing the world more coherent and discovering more order in 
it, more beauty, and a life more distinctively its own. 
At first, pantheism saw the world in God ; at a later stage 
it was rather God in the world. Finally, however, every- 
thing that postulates an inner unity underlying the 
manifoldness of the external world was expelled as a pure 
freak of human fancy, and all happenings were reduced 
to a mere juxtaposition of separate elements. Thus it 
was in positivism and agnosticism which completely 
satisfy all technical and scientific needs. Obviously, 
it is not mere opinions and theoretical expositions but 
rather actual work achieved and actual changes in the 
mode of life that lend more and more substance to the 
immediate sense-world and make it man's spiritual as 
well as his bodily home. 



26 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

But there is another change characteristic of our 
modern world which touches the inner constitution of 
life still more deeply, — the change, that is, in the inner 
relationship of man to the world. The older thought 
regarded him as close-knit with the great reality; the 
microcosm depended wholly on the macrocosm ; the life 
of the universe was immediately present in man, so that 
he could unhesitatingly regard his own experience as an 
expression or copy of that life. Christianity, with its 
development of a transcendent, self-immediate inward- 
ness, was already working towards a breaking-up of 
this connexion; but it was left for our modern period, 
with its emphasis on personality and its intense self- 
consciousness, to give full effect to the view that man- 
kind's first study is man, and that life's main movement 
is not from the universe to man, but from man to the 
universe. At the same time it becomes evident that 
the world does not simply bestow itself on man without 
effort on his part. On the contrary, he must carve out a 
path to it and build it up by his own activity. This 
spiritual effort, and, in particular, the activity of thought 
become the pillar of all reality. It is to this, and not to 
the impressions of sense, that we must look for assurance 
of actuality. Thus our relationship to all that is pre- 
sented to us and that demands our recognition is no 
longer naive but critical, for everything must now justify 
itself before the tribunal of our thought-activity and 
stand its scrutiny. This will especially affect our rela- 
tionship to history, precisely that relationship which is 
of the utmost importance to Christianity. For hence- 
forth it is no longer possible to accept comfortably and 
in good faith all that tradition bequeaths to us. We 
demand exact verification, and our keener scrutiny may 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 27 

pronounce much to be false, or at least uncertain, which 
formerly never gave rise to a shadow of doubt. More- 
over it becomes a very urgent question whether a sys- 
tem which answered the requirements of one particular 
period be capable of extending its usefulness beyond 
the limits of that period and becoming universal. May 
it not gradually lose its lustre and decline in power ? 

These inner changes which take place do not at first 
direct themselves against religion; they leave it for the 
moment completely unmolested. But the whole change 
of mental attitude which they initiate must in last resort 
involve religion also, and grave changes in its form may 
prove to be inevitable inasmuch as they are merely 
the logical consequences of indisputable truths. The 
movement of revolt gains irresistible impetus precisely 
from the fact that it does not contest mere single results, 
but revolutionises rather the whole mental attitude. 
Its influence permeates the age, acting as a powerful, 
though for the most part hidden, leaven, and no sharer 
in the spiritual work of the time can possibly remain 
unaffected by it. 

The an ti- Christian movement, however, starts with 
the peculiarly Christian characteristics, and thence 
extends its attack gradually to the more general truths. 
We must therefore run through the stages we have noted 
above in reversed order. 

1. We find even within the confines of Christianity 
a hot conflict as to the position of the Church and its 
claim to dominate man's whole life. Many factors 
contributed to this result. In the first place, the State 
from the very outset never willingly accorded the required 
submission. Throughout the Middle Ages it continued 
to fight for its independence, and grew more convinced 



28 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

of the justice of its cause in proportion as it became in 
modern times a civilisation-centre, invested as such with 
spiritual responsibilities which it fulfilled quite inde- 
pendently of religious aims. There was also a strained 
relation from the very outset between the Church and 
the individual. The spontaneous inward lif e of the indi- 
vidual soul might well receive a check when once the 
Church became the sole depositary of truth and the 
moral conscience of mankind; and the problem grew 
acute so soon as the fresher, more courageous outlook 
which marked the dawn of the modern era made the 
individual more conscious of his independence and value. 
Finally even the spiritual life itself was endangered by 
the domination of the Church, and this in two ways : 
religiously, inasmuch as the Church stepped in between 
God and the soul and claimed for itself the reverence due 
to God alone; and morally, inasmuch as work for the 
Church, devotion, ceremonies, and sacrifice were apt to 
make straightforward moral action seem merely a second- 
ary matter. In fact, the aims of the Church might 
even seem to justify a course of action which contravened 
the moral order. 

All these different lines of resistance were welded 
together by the Reformation and united in a common 
activity. Indeed the significance of the Reformation 
for the world lies not so much in the change of doctrine 
which it effected, as in the change of life, in the stronger 
emphasis laid on the ethical core of Christianity in all 
its personal immediacy, and in the more effectual devel- 
opment of the immediate relationship between the soul 
and God. But at the same time the Reformation 
marked a breaking-up of the old system and an 
abandonment of an all-embracing life-unity. It is good 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 29 

as a beginning, wrong when it claims to have said the 
last word. 

Criticism of the position of the Church, however, could 
not go far without involving an examination of her 
historic claim ; and this soon revealed much uncertainty 
on fundamental points which Christians regarded as 
impregnable. It became clear once and for all to every 
unprejudiced mind that the Church had won her suprem- 
acy gradually, not possessed it from the outset; and 
her claim to be divinely instituted was particularly 
open to doubt. It became increasingly obvious that the 
words of Jesus on which she rests that claim were handed 
down by a none too authentic tradition, and may very 
probably have been attributed to Jesus under the influ- 
ence of the Church herself as she grew in power, so that 
her claim to supremacy would really rest on evidence 
supplied by herself alone. The discovery of this circle 
in the chain of proof destroys, however, all its power. 
Possibly refuge will be sought in the frivolous view that 
faith is superior even to history, i.e. that historical facts 
may be denied or altered if the interest of the Church 
require it. 

2. But the attack on the position of the Church may 
very possibly leave the central dogma of Christianity, 
— the dogma of the Incarnation, — wholly unmolested. 
The Reformers, indeed, championed this quite as reso- 
lutely as the early Church had done. But this dogma 
also is beginning to appear in a very different light under 
the influence of historical research. We see now that 
it did not spring into being full-grown, but developed 
gradually, though at a very early date, and that the 
ideas and needs peculiar to the age played a large part 
in its development. A comparison of that age with 



3 o CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

our own makes us realise very vividly what a change the 
centuries have wrought in our attitude to this problem 
and how diametrically opposed is much of our modern 
thought to a view which then gave no offence and seemed 
even indispensable. 

The doctrine which teaches that God, at one particular 
point of history, assumes a human form, — that a person 
is at once very God and very man, — implies conceptions 
of God and of man which are and must be repellent not 
only to the scientific spirit of the modern man, but also 
to his religious conviction. Our conceptions of the 
Godhead have grown and widened, whereas we find man 
to be so limited, conditioned, and confined in many ways 
that the direct union of his being with God's might well 
seem to us an unendurable supposition. The meeting 
of Godhead and manhood in one person, moreover, — 
of two natures in one life, — cannot be more closely 
defined without a destruction of the balance between 
the two and the suppression or annihilation of the one 
factor by the other. Either the "very God" destroys 
the "very man," and reduces the manhood to a mere 
semblance, or the "very man" destroys the "very God" 
and the Godhead is understood as merely an exalted 
humanity. The Church could of course decree that the 
two natures were one, but it did not thereby make the 
doctrine conceivable, or invest it with any vital power. 
Even such as hold aloof from all ultimate questions can 
easily see that a human life invested with the conscious- 
ness of divine nature and dignity could never fully share 
the sorrows and needs of human existence. It would 
know nothing of man's heaviest burden, his groping and 
wandering, his doubt and uncertainty, and the way 
in which all his doings seem to be swallowed up in an 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 31 

impenetrable world. A God who is perfectly certain 
that He will soon resume His Godhead, who at the same 
time knows that by descending among men and taking 
their sorrow upon Him He can win them salvation for 
all time, shares the whole burden of human fate as little 
as does a prince the sorrows of poverty when he assumes 
its garb for a time and shares its pursuits. 

Moreover, the conception of an atoning, vicarious suf- 
fering is repellent and distasteful to our modern minds. 
Not that we in any way misjudge and undervalue the 
depth of the ethical feeling involved in it. The funda- 
mental ideas of the gravity of the moral law and the 
healing power of a selfless love, enduring and becoming 
more intense through stress of need and sorrow, — 
such ideas may well command our veneration even 
to-day. But it is otherwise when we come to the pre- 
cise form which the problem in this connexion is con- 
strained to take and which is thrust with enslaving force 
upon mankind. To our scientific, and still more to our 
religious temper, there is something impossible in the 
idea of a God who is wroth with our sins and demands 
His son's atoning blood before He can again become 
gracious to mankind. No less disturbing are the ideas 
of mediation and substitution. An earlier age, having 
made God as remote as possible from the world, found 
in mediation the one and only means of approaching 
Him. We moderns are more concerned with finding 
a direct relation to God, and we look upon the idea of 
mediation as separating rather than uniting us. We 
are compelled to place most insistent emphasis on the 
idea that the religious life can have and must have one 
and only one all-dominating and fundamental relation, 
and that therefore any worship of a mediator as divine 



32 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

restricts and diminishes the worship of God. God is 
pushed into the background to make place for man. 
It is therefore the religious consciousness itself which 
turns against the idea of a mediator, believing that it 
formulates the concept of redemption, — a concept 
absolutely indispensable to religion, — in a manner 
appropriate to the needs of a particular age, but unable 
to give permanent satisfaction. 

When further we contemplate the important part 
played by the sacrificial blood in this doctrine of media- 
tion and substitution, we cannot but realise that this 
whole mode of presentation, penetrated though it be 
by a depth of real spiritual feeling, yet belongs to an- 
other, more childish and more picture-loving stage of 
spiritual development than that in which we find our- 
selves to-day after all our centuries of experience and 
struggle. That which once seemed a fitting expression 
of divine truth bids fair to become for us anthropo- 
morphic and mythological. And no power on earth 
can force us to respect as religious a conception which we 
once perceive to be of the nature of myth. 

But if this central dogma of the Incarnation fall or 
waver, then all the distinctive doctrines of Christianity 
lose their root and their connecting principle, and the 
whole of the second article of the creed is left without 
support. The humanly incarnated Son of God must 
have a miraculous birth free from all human incomplete- 
ness ; He must descend into hell that He may influence 
departed spirits ; He must rise again in bodily form and 
in bodily form ascend into heaven, thence to come 
again to judge the world. Each of these items was 
indispensable to the older thought, but what becomes of 
them all when once their support and foundation gives 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 33 

way ? Nor must we forget that these doctrines are not 
propositions which Christianity could take up and put 
down at pleasure ; they are essential constituents of its 
most important article of faith, and belong to that which 
is to give man support and comfort for life and death. 
But do they hold this place in modern Christianity? 
Is it true of the Virgin Birth, for instance, or of the 
Descent into Hell and the Ascension ? 

The loosening of this complex of metaphysical asser- 
tions led modern Christianity to turn with gladness to 
that other assemblage of facts which, as belonging to 
history, is so much nearer and simpler and seemed so 
much less debatable. We refer to the personality 
and lifework of Jesus, and to his doctrine that the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand and that man is a child of God. 
The irresistible force and freshness of this preaching, its 
wonderful earnestness, its joyous, childlike confidence 
were so purely human and so free from all taint of dogma 
that they seemed to offer sufficient compensation for the 
weakening of the old metaphysical belief. It is true 
that here also we light upon difficulties due to historical 
criticism. No one to-day can doubt that the accounts 
of Jesus contain many later accretions, and that his pic- 
ture does not show him simply as he was, but is to a large 
extent coloured by the belief and veneration of succeed- 
ing ages. We are indeed of opinion that even the keenest- 
eyed criticism cannot touch the purely human figure 
at the centre of the story. This, with its incomparable 
uniqueness and its wealth of fresh revelation, could never 
have been a mere after-discovery, pieced together out of 
broken fragments. Such a contention would betray 
a want of appreciation of that which really constitutes 
a creative personality. With justice has it been said: 



34 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

"He who cannot trace in the basic synoptic account a 
really individual life is useless for historical research 
in this field" (Wendland). Let us then rejoice in the 
life of Jesus as a valuable possession for the human race 
and an inexhaustible source of genuine power and senti- 
ment. But can his personality, — once its metaphysical 
foundations are shaken, — continue to hold that central, 
regulative, controlling position which ecclesiastical Chris- 
tianity assigns to it? That position rested, after all, 
upon the unique relationship to God involved in the 
fact of belonging to the divine nature : only from this 
point of view can Jesus rank as the unquestioned lord 
and master to whom all ages must do homage. Great 
though he undoubtedly is even apart from such claim, 
yet, apart from it, the greatness is such as pertains 
to our common humanity, and all the new and divine 
life which it made manifest must be potentially within 
us all and may become our own possession. In this case 
we should no longer see in Jesus the type and standard 
of what all human life should be, but rather an incom- 
parably great personality, not to be easily imitated. In 
any case, once regarded in this light, he can no longer, 
however lofty and pure his humanity, be an object of 
faith and be worshipped as divine. Every attempt to 
take refuge in compromise is wrecked on a relentless 
Either-Or. There is no middle term between man 
and God, for we do not wish to sink back into hero-cult. 
Thus if Jesus is not God, and Christ not the Second 
Person of the Trinity, then he is man, — not a man like 
any one of us, but still man. We may revere him as a 
leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot forthwith bind 
and pledge ourselves to him and yield him unconditional 
submission. Still less can we make him the centre of a 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 35 

cult, for that would now be nothing else than an intoler- 
able idolatry. 

At the same time, however, there arises the inevitable 
question whether the historic substance and the human 
greatness, which remain when the metaphysical belief 
has dropped away, are strong enough to sustain a whole 
religious structure, and concrete enough to give support 
and protection against all doubts and needs and assure 
our human life of a new world. The historic fact had a 
world-significance so long as it was intimately bound up 
with the metaphysical belief. Can it retain such sig- 
nificance when once this connexion has been loosened ? 

3. If then the second group of facts offer no compen- 
sation for the upsetting of the first, Christianity is left 
without any solid foundation of fact whatsoever, and at 
the same time is deprived of any sure central truth to 
bind together all its individual convictions and give them 
an unshakable certainty. It may be seriously questioned 
whether, apart from such a central truth, a religion can 
have any unity at all, and even whether it can exist 
as an independent power. In modern times, however, 
we have expended much effort on the attempt to main- 
tain a distinctively Christian thought-world in defiance 
of all doubts concerning its facts. Indeed, this dis- 
severance of Christian thought from both metaphysical 
and historical statement has been regarded as a triumph 
for breadth and freedom. It has speedily become 
manifest, however, that even this thought-world is 
not exempt from attack. All the main positions have 
in these latter days been threatened by opposing move- 
ments, and though these seemed at first supplementary 
rather than antagonistic to Christianity, yet as time 
went on they revealed ever more clearly the opposition 



36 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

that was latent in them, and finally entered upon an 
open and bitter conflict with the Christian faith, which 
is now compelled at every point to struggle for its 
existence. 

This is particularly evident in regard to the conception 
and valuation of the distinctively Christian morality. 
The attack was directed in the first instance not against 
morality in general, but against the specifically Christian 
morality, — its soft, mild, yielding character. From 
the very outset there was difficulty in reconciling this 
morality with the existing condition of things. From 
the very outset the objection was urged that Christianity 
lacked the force and hardness required for breaking 
down the resistance of this hostile world, that it was 
indeed defenceless against evil. As a matter of fact 
it continually resorted to compromise and an adjust- 
ment of its ideals to worldly requirements. In mod- 
ern times, however, the problem has become more 
acute, inasmuch as our more courageous hold on life 
has required a complete subjugation of the environ- 
ment, a thorough mastery of its resistant elements, and 
has at the same time insisted on a more manly and 
aggressive morality. This demand has received addi- 
tional force from observation of the fact that Christian 
morality has been influential in controlling the individual 
disposition rather than in transforming general condi- 
tions. Christianity was indeed rich in works of mercy, 
but the establishment of rational codes of justice in the 
social life of mankind was reserved for our modern era. 
This, — not Christianity, — has abolished slavery ; this, 
— not Christianity, — has treated the social question 
as a matter of justice. 

Indeed, even within the Christian world itself, this 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 37 

morality was too soft and mild to permeate our human 
nature thoroughly, so that it left much that was rude and 
cruel wholly unchallenged. Who can contemplate wild 
orgies of fanaticism and bloody persecution, — the 
destruction of the order of Templars, for instance, or the 
horrors of the Inquisition in Spain and the Netherlands, 
— without being all too painfully conscious of a denial of 
Christian love ? Do not those horrors present us at best 
with but a miserable counterfeit of it ? And do we rind 
even to-day that ecclesiastical factions are specially 
renowned for love and meekness? Thus it seems as 
though Christian love were limited to private relation- 
ships, and were not equal to grappling with universal 
problems. 

Thus the contradiction which Christian morality has 
encountered in our modern world is easily explicable. 
But the movement of opposition soon extended its 
reach and began to challenge the supremacy of morality 
in general and even to deny it any important role what- 
soever. The status of morality in Christianity was 
essentially conditioned and determined by the fact that 
Christianity regarded the relationship of spirit to spirit, 
of personality to personality, as constituting the real 
kernel of life. From this point of view, morality, under- 
stood as mutual self-surrender, became the soul of all 
reality. Here alone life seemed to find a pure self- 
immediacy and at the same time to glow with warm 
emotion and a passion of exalted joy. All other activity, 
all outwardly directed effort, seemed from this stand- 
point to belong to a cold and lifeless external world. 
Modern thought, however, with its searching experiences 
of life, has placed the kernel of action very differently : 
it finds genuine action only where psychical energy is in 



38 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

contact with the object and the two act and react upon 
each other, — where activity, therefore, is taking shape in 
the form of work. Only by thus developing an objective 
character does activity free itself from vague subjectivity, 
win full reality, and develop a world, whereas everything 
that is confined purely to the soul and would fain work 
direct from soul to soul is in danger of becoming a mere 
shadow. For this school of thought feeling could be 
nothing more than a mere forerunner or echo of action : 
it could not possess an independent value. Morality, 
on this view, sank to the level of an accessory ; it became 
a mere concomitant effect, with no claim to interfere in 
the serious shaping of the life-process. The main cur- 
rents of modern life meet in this conviction. Not only 
is naturalism prone to regard morality as something 
secondary and subsidiary to other ends, but modern 
intellectualism, such as that of Hegel, looks upon it as 
something which refers only to the position of the individ- 
ual in relation to the groundwork of events, so that it 
can never bring forth a kingdom of its own, an independ- 
ent reality. In neither case is there any room for free 
decision and personal action such as morality demands. 
The whole of reality is converted, as it were, into a mere 
succession of events. 

This movement in the direction of greater objectivity 
gave birth to vast social systems which are guided solely 
by their own necessities, claim all man's energy on their 
behalf, and repudiate all direct reference to moral aims 
as a source of confusion and perversion, a hindrance to 
free development of faculty and individual expression. 
Such organisations we find in modern science, modern 
art, modern economics. These could not have devel- 
oped as they have done save in complete independence 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 39 

of morals. Morality is thus apt to seem a mere private 
individual concern, which has no importance for the larger 
world. But it is a question whether, when thus de- 
graded, it can still constitute the soul of life even for the 
individual himself. And how can moral purification and 
salvation continue any longer to be the chief and all- 
absorbing problem ? Christianity cannot possibly meet 
with real understanding and appreciation when even 
the question which it is its glory to answer is no longer 
put to it. 

Nor is it morality alone that is pushed from centre to 
periphery. It is also that personal shaping of life which 
involves constant reference of one life-unity to another. 
The main trend of modern movements is against the 
casting of life in a personal mould, which seems too 
narrow and petty to comprehend genuine life in all its 
fulness, and too apt to lead to disfigurement and over- 
subjectivity. From this point of view the warmth and 
inwardness of personal life appears as a mere fluctuation 
of emotional sentiment. It cannot furnish a starting- 
point whence we may proceed to outline the fundamental 
concepts of reality, nor can the concept of the personality 
of God be regarded any longer as a symbol of ultimate 
truth, but merely as unseemly anthropomorphism. Con- 
cepts displace and replace each other for the reason that 
life's centre of gravity is shifted, and that which was 
central in Christianity is now relegated to the surface. 
How hard it now becomes to understand the belief that 
the gain of the whole world does not compensate for 
loss to the soul ! 

4. The very idea, moreover, of a religion of redemp- 
tion seems untenable in face of the changing conditions 
of modern life. We have seen how indispensable this 



4 o CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

idea was in the weary decadent days of the ancient world, 
and how men at that time could win courage and strength 
for life only through a firm reliance on supernatural aid. 
Now, however, we have found such strength and courage 
within the borders of this earthly existence. The 
awakening and utilising of our own faculties become 
our main joy and incentive, and it seems almost petty 
and cowardly to begin by looking for outside help. 

This modern consciousness of strength, moreover, 
receives fresh support and confirmation from certain 
specific changes proceeding along two different lines; 
firstly, from the coalition of men in both historical and 
social developments, and secondly, from the conviction 
that our existing environment is capable of modification. 

So long as individuals worked merely side by side and 
only joined forces casually and for short periods, man's 
powers were confined within narrow limits and were 
soon broken on the resisting rock of hard fact. With the 
changes in modern fife, however, and the help of our 
improved technique, individual forces have become more 
closely united and more intimately related. Not only 
have complex industrial organisations, such as the 
modern factory, sprung into being, but we have also 
seen the rise of modern science and modern administra- 
tive systems. All these, working with organised effort, 
have achieved incomparably greater results than individ- 
ual forces, isolated as they had hitherto been, had ever 
been able to attain. Man's consciousness of power was 
thus greatly increased, and he could now embark cheer- 
fully upon tasks which were formerly quite beyond him. 
This whole movement is further strengthened by a new 
understanding of history which has its roots in modern 
technical industry. The separate epochs are regarded 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 41 

as each contributing its quota to a coherent whole. 
Every genuine achievement of any special period is 
stored up and transmitted to the succeeding period, so 
that our labours might be likened to the building of a 
great pyramid where layer is added to layer and a use is 
found for even the smallest contribution. "Many 
shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. " 
Through the development of such co-operative work 
in history and society, mankind, as an industrial whole, 
made enormous advance. The whole could succeed 
where the individual failed ; the ages, linked together, 
could effect what the moment was powerless to achieve. 
With the growth of man's capacity to develop his 
powers, the improvement of outward conditions became 
likewise more possible. No longer, as in earlier times, 
did the world seem immutably fixed by some obscure 
fate or divine ordinance, so that it must be accepted 
just as it is with all its evils. It began to be regarded, 
rather, as still in the making. Great changes seemed 
possible. Man was no longer obliged to confine his efforts 
to alleviating simply the outward manifestations of pov- 
erty, sickness, and need. He felt himself empowered 
and commissioned to attack the evil at its roots and con- 
tribute energetically towards the progress of the world. 
Nor did the movement stay in the realm of mere dis- 
position and intention; it found very real expression. 
The briefest glance at modern developments in medicine 
and social legislation is sufficient to make us conscious 
of a radical change in the situation of affairs and a new 
attitude of man towards reality. Instead of patiently 
resigning himself to the irrationality of existence, he cour- 
ageously declares war upon it, and in the success which 
attends his efforts becomes inspired with an exultant 



42 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

self-confidence. At the same time he learns to despise 
all waiting on supernatural aid. For his successes have 
not been due to any miraculous intervention ; they have 
been won little by little through his own exertions, and 
he has the right to be proud of them. Amid the stress of 
such movements the idea of redemption fades altogether 
from his mind. It gives place ever more and more 
submissively to the idea of progress. Surely the expan- 
sion of power, the living of life for the sake of its own 
progress will supply a completely satisfactory content for 
existence ! Over against the ethical ideal of life, with 
its change of heart, there grows up a dynamic ideal, 
which aims at an unlimited expansion of power and shapes 
all values and standards for itself. This growth of 
humanity towards a solidarity of labour, embracing all 
times and places, inevitably checks the growth of the 
God-idea. Faith in God pales before faith in humanity. 
Modern positivism, for instance, actually preaches the 
cult of humanity (le grand etre) as a new creed. And 
Ludwig Feuerbach expresses this modern tendency very 
strikingly when he says: "God was my first thought, 
reason my second, man my third and last." How 
fares it then, under these conditions, with the kingdom of 
God? 

5. Christianity is the religion of pure spirituality. 
It regards nature as the work of spirit and an instrument 
for the attainment of spiritual ends, — never as existing 
in its own right. In modern thought, on the other hand, 
nature has acquired an independent status. She revealed 
herself to the eye of science only in proportion as she 
drove out all soul-element and welded that which was 
soulless the more firmly and closely together. But this 
new development, which was equally well-marked in the 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 43 

domain of technical achievement, held within it the germ 
of serious hostility to religion. This first found open ex- 
pression in regard to the problem of miracles. Miracles 
are no mere embroidery of ecclesiastical Christianity; 
they are inseparably involved in its fundamental truths. 
To the older thought they proclaimed unmistakably 
the superiority of the spiritual world, but to the modern 
mind they present a serious stumbling-block, as violating 
the coherency of the cosmos. It can scarcely be denied 
that to-day they hinder religious conviction rather than 
help it. 

But the new movement does not confine itself to this 
special point ; its effects are more far-reaching. Nature 
with her newly won independence reacts more and more 
strongly upon spiritual life, is always imprisoning it 
within narrower limits and seeking to constitute herself 
the whole of reality. We are each and all of us immersed 
in a world of concrete actualities. There is no longer 
any question as to the complete dependence of psychical 
life on bodily conditions or the close relation of man to 
animal, or the hitherto neglected power of material 
factors in controlling the development of historical and 
social conditions. All this side of life now for the first 
time receives its due. Another influence working in the 
same direction is a strong desire for unity which, over- 
leaping experience, seeks to establish the exclusive right 
of nature, to deny and do away with all independence 
of the spiritual life, and to fit all facts and events into 
natural moulds. It is true that, even in modern thought, 
there is a current of opposition to this tendency. From 
the very outset intellectualism makes its appearance as 
the opponent of naturalism. Its claim strengthened 
by the outburst of mental activity which we have already 



44 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

noted, it takes such activity as its standing-ground, and 
contends with much zeal and emphasis that thought is 
the necessary starting-point, the primitive workshop of 
life, and that we do not even see nature directly as she is, 
but grasp her only through the medium of thought and 
construct her image in accordance with the laws of this 
thought. Certainly the thought- world is more important 
than the sense- world for the awakened spiritual insight. 
But however just this consideration may be and how- 
ever fatal to crude materialism, yet it only carries real 
conviction when spiritual work is at a high level. Intel- 
lectualism, moreover, does not, like naturalism, make life 
an all-inclusive coherent whole in which every power is 
constrained to subserve one single task. Thus it is far 
inferior to naturalism in its influence on humanity as a 
whole and is constantly losing ground as culture becomes 
more and more diffused among the masses. There is only 
one way in which a spiritual movement can offer success- 
ful resistance to the increased influence of natural 
environment and its attempt to invade even the sanctu- 
ary of the inward life : it must be the unity within which 
the manifoldness of our human striving is focussed, and 
thus enabled to assert itself with unanswerable force. 
Such unity, however, the spiritual life of to-day cannot 
show us within its own sphere. If, then, man is absorbed 
more and more into nature and must shape his whole life 
on the natural pattern, certain values will fade and 
vanish, apart from which no religion can subsist, and 
Christianity least of all. It is vain to speak any more of 
a pure inwardness and a self-immediacy of life if all 
psychical life be simply the accompaniment of bodily 
processes or be actually produced by them. How can 
men be members of a spiritual brotherhood and partici- 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 45 

pate directly in the life of humanity as a whole, if there 
be nothing more than sense-juxtaposition of elements 
and all contact be simply external ? If all that happens 
be subject to the changes of time and can offer no resist- 
ance to them, what room is there for eternal truths and 
that personal immortality which is a main article of the 
Christian faith ? 

Moreover, the complete absorption of man into nature 
means the destruction not only of Christianity but like- 
wise of every other religion. For man must in some way 
transcend nature in order to discover a divinity and be 
able to seek connexion with it. To a merely natural 
being all religion is but a tissue of illusions, and the only 
puzzle is how it could ever come into existence at all. 

6. The outcome of all this is a re-assertion and con- 
firmation of the fact which was the starting-point of our 
enquiry : that man has been moving closer to the world 
of sense-immediacy, with the result that religion has been 
constantly yielding ground, narrowing its sphere and 
thinning its content. Once it claimed to control all 
departments of life, but now these departments, such as 
law and morals, art and science, have cut adrift from its 
direction and sought to base themselves on a reason which 
dwells within man. It is in this way that a "natural" 
law arose, a "natural" morality, and even a "natural" 
religion. An age in which such a tendency is at work 
naturally resents the exclusively religious control of life 
as being intolerably narrowing. Nothing but a universal 
culture can satisfy the whole man, and religion, like 
other departments, can subsist only as an element in 
this culture and must take shape within it. But how 
can religion do this without sacrificing, or at least seri- 
ously weakening, its own distinctive character ? At all 



46 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

events, if it be nothing more than a fragment of a uni- 
versal culture, it can never produce a new life, break 
with the world, and direct its hopes and aspirations, as 
Christianity did, to a new reality ; namely, the kingdom 
of God. The limitations thus imposed on it must inevit- 
ably imperil its content, making it more and more 
tenuous. 

We find an actual demonstration of this in the modern 
movement from an unseen to the seen world, a movement 
whose progress we can trace through certain well- 
defined stages. The first, panentheism, by regarding 
an aesthetic outlook as more important than moral 
conversion, was already taking the first step in thinning 
down the substance of Christianity. Pantheism changes 
religion still more drastically into a mere sentiment, a 
devotional feeling which simply accompanies the prog- 
ress of civilisation and gives soul to the sense- world, 
but can never bring about any essential change or eleva- 
tion in its character. When finally in the latest or 
agnostic phase we find the divine becoming inaccessibly 
remote, and religion merely the recognition of a dark 
mysterious background of which we can know nothing 
at all, then it needs but one short step to land us in com- 
plete and blank denial. A religion as empty as this may 
just as well disappear altogether. Yet when a tendency 
of this kind has been slowly leavening the centuries, 
to resist it is an extremely difficult if not wholly im- 
possible task, at least from the modern standpoint, 
which puts religion from the outset at a disadvantage. 

For whereas in earlier times religion was the starting- 
point for life and carried within itself its own convincing 
certainty, God being better known than His crea- 
tures (deus notior creatura, mens cor pore), now it 



RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIANITY 47 

has first to justify itself from the standpoint of the 
world, wherein it encounters serious difficulties. The 
reason why all affirmation is so weak and all denial so 
strong is that life's centre of gravity now falls outside 
religion instead of within it. The divine is apt to seem 
a mere afterthought. The very attempt to prove it may 
easily have a destructive effect, since it makes it depend 
upon some outside fact, whereas its power to convince 
should really reside within itself. If religion is no 
longer the first of all truths, it is in danger of becoming 
the last of all ; if it has lost its immediate certainty, as 
it has done to-day, it may easily become more uncer- 
tain than anything else. "God is at once the easiest 
and the hardest to know ; the first and the easiest 
where the path is light, the last and the hardest where the 
path is dark" (Leibniz). 

This change of orientation in life as a whole makes itself 
felt also in the life of the individual. He too finds more 
substance and value in the world around him: it claims 
him ever more exclusively ; it offers him so many tasks, 
such treasure both of work and of enjoyment, it is so 
diversified and interesting and fills him with such keen 
satisfaction that the wish to renounce it all and seek a 
new world may well strike him as fantastic. But in 
proportion as this becomes a settled habit of mind and 
clearly articulate in our consciousness, religion, and with 
it Christianity, loses its importance for civilisation and 
threatens to vanish altogether. 

Thus at all the main points we find modern life sever- 
ing itself more and more from Christianity and viewing 
it with hostility. Is it any wonder if these different 
streams of tendency finally converge and concentrate 
themselves against the whole Christian position? For 



48 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

the older generations, Christianity was a strong rock 
and refuge, established to all eternity, defying the 
mutations of time. Now time has asserted its power 
over this structure also, directing an attack upon it 
which has been continually gathering force and slowly 
sapping its foundations. At first it was covert and felt 
only here and there, but little by little it grew bolder 
and extended operations over the whole area till at last 
the fortress seems to be undermined and the decisive 
moment to be at hand in which nothing can avert a com- 
plete downfall. 

So, at least, think the adversaries. Perhaps their 
triumph is premature, perhaps wholly unwarranted. 
But even the unprejudiced observer is constrained to 
admit that Christianity no longer holds its old position. 
It has been driven from its status of undisputed posses- 
sion and forced into an attitude of defence. In this 
process of defending itself it has often abandoned perilous 
outposts and sought to withdraw upon some essential 
position. From historic facts it has retreated upon 
ideas, from certain specified ideas upon a philosophy of 
life as a whole, and from all such philosophy upon the 
achievements of Christian ethics which nobody seemed 
able to dispute. But even this supposed refuge proved 
fallacious. It became apparent that, after all, the 
main ideas and valuations of Christianity were no less 
vigorously assailed than its facts, both historical and 
metaphysical, and that scarcely anywhere was the onset 
more violent than in the region of Christian ethics. But 
if it be impossible to find anywhere a point that is safe 
from attack, if there be no sure central truth holding 
together all diversity of opinion, if every stable position 
be drawn into the arena of discussion and debate, then 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 49 

even the friend of Christianity will scarcely be able to 
escape a sense of insecurity. Christianity had exercised 
a powerful unifying influence over life and at the same 
time had developed a distinctive way of viewing the 
world and assimilating its impressions. This concentra- 
tion of man's powers was particularly helpful in in- 
creasing his capacity to resist suffering and to believe 
and hope through the darkest days. Now, however, the 
cohesion of Christianity has been impaired through 
constant attack and even threatened with complete 
disruption. The experiences of life, emancipated from 
traditional interpretations and restraints, appeal to us 
with all the force of immediate impressions. But there- 
with all the primitive questions of human life come up 
again with fresh force, and the riddles of existence make 
their mystery felt with painful acuteness. In face of 
them we now seem to be weaponless and helpless. 

Perhaps this is mere seeming; perhaps our resources 
are greater than we think. But unquestionably there is 
at present a complete tangle of certainties and uncer- 
tainties, and no criterion by which we can distinguish 
between them. Such a state of affairs is no longer 
tolerable and drives us inexorably back upon the ques- 
tion "Can we still to-day be Christians ?" 

III. What Reasons are there for refusing to 
reject Christianity? 

If Christianity be breaking up as we have described, 
why, we might reasonably ask, should we be perturbed 
about it ? Why not accept the situation as inevitable ? 
Though the severance from so old and familiar a posses- 
sion cannot but be painful, yet, if truth demand it, we 

E 



50 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

surely dare not shrink. The demand indeed must be 
unmistakable, and its content clear as day. Any doubts 
in regard to it would bring the whole movement to a 
standstill. 

As a matter of fact such doubts arise. A cause of 
misgiving and stumbling meets us at the very outset in 
the fact that the disintegrating tendency of the modern 
movement is not limited to Christianity but reaches 
beyond it, attacking indeed everything that gives life a 
spiritual character. The more closely this move- 
ment allies itself with the world, the less room has 
it for religion of any kind, however "free- thinking " 
and "enlightened." The more exclusive its in- 
sistence on strength and efficiency, the more surely 
does it undermine morality. The more it breaks up all 
the inward ties that bind men together, the more cer- 
tainly does it reduce all intellectual activity to a merely 
individual phenomenon, and can therefore neither 
understand nor tolerate the idea of science as a power 
that compels man and is independent of all fluctuating 
opinions. Are we prepared to accept these results also 
and hail them with enthusiasm ? Is there not something 
self-contradictory in using spiritual work as a means of 
destroying all spiritual life and therewith all possibility 
of spiritual work ? 

Nor is it merely the effects of this countermovement 
which prove to be less simple than its protagonists 
imagine ; the same thing applies also to its constitution. 
Closer investigation shows that it unites two very differ- 
ent tendencies. They may work together for the mo- 
ment and so produce a very powerful effect, but in the long 
run they are bound to diverge and cross one another and 
even pull in opposite directions. There is in the first 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 51 

place a more general movement, the tendency of our 
modern times to seek a broader, freer, clearer life, 
a life of greater independence and spiritual spontaneity. 
As this life extends its transforming power to one domain 
after another, it throws new light also on our historical 
inheritance and therefore makes new demands of Chris- 
tianity. But possibly Christianity may be able to 
comply with these demands without suffering any harm, 
perhaps even with the result of developing her own powers 
all the more freely. In any case it would first be neces- 
sary to prove that an irreconcilable conflict was really in 
question. With the second and more specific movement 
it is otherwise. This is the movement of our modern 
life towards a merely naturalistic culture, a culture, that 
is, which limits all its activity to the world around us, 
makes this the goal of all its hopes and aspirations and 
rejects everything which steps beyond its boundaries. 
Now between a tendency of this kind and Christianity, 
— the religion of world-transcending inwardness, — 
no kind of agreement is possible. There can only be a 
life-and-death struggle. But as these two tendencies 
intersect and combine at many points, the narrower 
statement is wont to appropriate to itself all that is most 
convincing in the broader. Its greater definiteness, 
moreover, gives it an advantage as against the less well- 
defined. Thus it has been able to pose as the repre- 
sentative of the whole modern movement and to turn 
all that is strong and just in it into the service of its 
own flat denial of Christianity. So soon as we perceive 
the injustice of this proceeding and keep these two 
tendencies well apart, the problem of Christianity begins 
to appear in a new light and it might very well be shown 
that the keen opposition to it was really due to the 



52 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

deterioration of modern life. The restriction to a 
naturalistic culture would then have to be examined on 
its own merits, and if such culture, when divested of all 
alien help and thrown solely on its own resources, should 
prove unequal to the task of comprehending and con- 
trolling human life, — should in fact prove more 
destructive in its effects just in proportion as it developed 
its own specific character, — then Christianity could 
regard its opposition without fear and might feel itself 
fully competent to dealing with such an adversary. 

The first thing to do, then, is to make clear distinctions, 
in the light of which we shall be able to estimate the 
precise significance of this reactionary movement as a 
whole, how far it is justified in insisting upon changes, 
and wherein its own claim is unjust. It was the united 
pressure of the two streams of tendency, taken as an 
unanalysed whole, that imperilled Christianity. Every 
distinction made must tend to decrease the tension of the 
situation. 

Let us see then how things stand as regards the content 
of these two thought-movements and the claim of the 
naturalistic culture to control life. The simplest way will 
be to single out some specially important points and 
investigate the position of both the broader and the 
narrower movements in regard to them, at the same 
time enquiring into their potentialities. Let us select as 
such points the attitude taken up towards the world, 
the valuation of human nature, and the shaping of work. 

(a) Attitude towards the World 

A more appreciative attitude towards the world and 
greater absorption in its interests, — i.e. in the sum- 
total of all man's immediate concerns, — constitute 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 53 

a dominating characteristic of modern life. It is through 
this alone that modern science and modern art, modern 
politics, economics, and education have acquired their 
distinctive character. This is the pivot whereon hinges 
the whole fabric of modern civilisation with its far- 
reaching transformations of the whole general condition 
of life. It is unquestionably a far cry from this to the 
old Christianity, whose methods had to correspond to an 
age which had lost all pleasure in the world. But 
even here we must not forget that side by side with the 
depreciation of the world in its natural state, there was 
the disposition to exalt it in so far as it was renewed by 
God, so that Augustine could say that Christ came to 
free the world from the world. This disposition was 
further supported by Christian philosophy which under- 
stood the world as a self-revelation of God, and by 
mysticism which unified world and God. These influ- 
ences have contributed in no small degree to the develop- 
ment of our modern valuation of the world. But even 
our modern era did not at first regard the world as being 
valuable in itself, but rather as an expression, manifesta- 
tion, representation of a divine life which was its founda- 
tion and support. It was from the idea of God that the 
world derived both infinity and inward cohesion; it 
was only as reflecting the divine splendour that it became 
a kingdom of order and beauty. Devotion to a world 
so conceived did not imply any alienation from God. 
When Spinoza spoke of God as the " immanent cause of 
things," he did not mean that God works within a world 
already given, but rather that He continues to be Him- 
self when working on things, and that things are not 
without but within a universal life. 

In the early days when the modern movement was at 



54 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

its spiritual zenith, the counterpart to this transcendence 
of God was the independent status of spiritual work as 
regards all that man's experience can contribute to it. 
Life does not draw its content from the world, but de- 
velops through contact with the world, in assimilating and 
subduing it. It consists, therefore, not in absorbing 
merely, but rather in transforming the material it receives. 
That is why the chief modern thinkers were so insistent 
in reserving for the spirit in its struggle for knowledge 
an original heritage or an original capacity (innate 
ideas, a priori, etc.). It was in this connexion that 
Kant wrote the words: "The understanding does not 
derive its laws from nature : it imposes them upon 
nature. " Similarly the doctrine that morality is inde- 
pendent of all the stir and movement of the outside 
world was vigorously upheld: "in regard to moral 
laws, experience (alas !) is the mother of illusion, and 
it is in the highest degree reprehensible to wish to derive 
the laws regarding what I ought to do from that which 
actually is done or to limit the one by the other." 
Modern thought, moreover, cannot justify the high 
value it sets on personality and the personal life and the 
high hopes entertained in regard to it, save by making 
it an independent life-centre and allowing it to discover 
its own nature through grappling with the world. If 
personality is to comprehend the world in its embrace, 
must it not be superior to the world? From the per- 
sonalistic point of view, the pliant adaptation to natural 
existence appears throughout in the light of an unbear- 
able degradation, a shameful abasement of life. 

The creative energies of modern life, likewise, assert 
their superiority to the world. The world is for them so 
much raw material, and conditions the extent of their 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 55 

activity, but it is not the source whence that activity is 
derived. The only difference between this and the old 
Christian view is that Christianity regards the higher 
life as ours only through miraculous grace, whereas 
modern thought regards it as dwelling within us from 
the very beginning. But as on both views the processes 
of the spiritual life move independently of the world, 
their common fund of agreement is wider than their 
difference. It is, moreover, an open question whether 
our times are capable of giving clear and consistent 
expression to this immediate presence of a higher life 
in man, whether their own work and experience have 
not in this connexion revealed certain serious complica- 
tions which require a deepening of life and therewith 
bring us closer to Christianity. In any case the matter 
is still unsettled and the modern era has no right to pose 
as an ultimate tribunal. At a later stage we shall have 
to consider the question more closely. 

But not only did the world become to modern man 
vastly more important than it was in earlier times; it 
drew him with an ever stronger fascination, wound itself 
more closely round him, robbed him more and more 
utterly of his independence. Surrender to the world 
finally reached a point where reaction set in and the 
aspect of life was completely altered. Human activity 
became more and more engrossed with things, adapting 
and bending itself to their requirements; it lost more 
and more of its old superiority, and therewith the con- 
sciousness of superiority, till at last it reconciled itself 
willingly to being a mere product of the environment, a 
mere piece of the world's machinery. Another influence 
contributing to the same result was the tremendous 
expansion which the world was undergoing in the realm 



56 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

alike of the vast and the minute. An exhaustless wealth 
of concrete fact was being constantly pressed home on 
man, till at last human strength could no longer cope 
with it. The power to unify things and permeate them 
with spiritual meaning refused to act. The spirit ceased 
to be an independent life-centre and seemed as though 
henceforth it could find salvation only in serving. This 
development might seem at first sight to be pure gain, 
the gain of a wider, more open, more unprejudiced life, 
an emancipation from rigid formulas, a revival of youth 
and plasticity free from any and every limitation. That 
it does involve rich gain of this kind it is indeed impossi- 
ble to deny. But the gain becomes loss when this move- 
ment, instead of falling within a wider life, is intended to 
constitute in itself the whole of life. For with the dis- 
appearance of all independence of the spiritual life, there 
disappears also all possibility of reacting on things and 
transforming them. The soul becomes an empty vessel 
that looks to the environment for its whole content ; 
it is soft wax, taking now one shape, now another, 
according to changes of outward conditions. 

For what does the world become for man, if spiritual 
work be withdrawn from it ? A tissue of mere relations 
between impervious elements, a constant flux and change, 
countless movements crossing and re-crossing each other, 
a meaningless whirl. And man is drawn into the whirl, 
must seek a place in it, shape his life in accordance with 
it, adapt himself utterly to its requirements. Much 
then must disappear which hitherto seemed to constitute 
his sure possession and give him an important status. 
The soul, which now becomes the mere product of her 
environment, must renounce all inner unity and become 
a mere juxtaposition of detached processes : these pro- 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 57 

cesses may be joined into one bundle and act outwardly 
as though they were a whole, but they are not an inner 
whole, a whole, that is, which has comprehended the 
separate individual activities, infused itself into them and 
dwelt in them. With this break-up of the soul, values 
such as personality, character, inward disposition, con- 
viction become mere empty illusions, as does also the life 
that counts them worthy and believes in the duty of 
developing them. Man is on this view nothing more 
than a complicated mechanism, a complex of forces, a 
meeting-place of actions and reactions. 

But where there is no inner unity, the environment 
also is incapable of being welded into a whole. It remains 
a mere juxtaposition of separate points. There cannot 
be any reflection upon the world, any attempt to esti- 
mate and value it. There can be no relation between 
human life as a whole and reality as a whole and there- 
fore no contradiction between the demands of the soul 
and the constitution of the world, and no toiling and 
wrestling to overcome such contradiction. But history 
tells us that it is precisely from such wrestling that all 
the decisive advances in man's progress have been won. 
For it was the contradiction in question which above 
all else elicited new powers and led men to try new paths. 
Plato's inspiring Ideas, Dante's richly coloured world- 
pictures, Kant's revolutionary Critique, — how would 
these have been possible had not a great soul taken upon 
itself to struggle for spiritual self-preservation in the 
teeth of all resistance, and, for the successful prosecu- 
tion of its task, had changed both the aspect of the world 
and the purpose of life ? A naturalistic culture is obliged 
to interpret all this, and in fact all great art, as empty 
illusion and gross error. 



58 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

We may indeed state as a general truth that, with 
the complete absorption of man by his environment, 
much remains unintelligible which not only tended to 
lift him in his own esteem but has also proved its worth 
through radical changes wrought in the condition of life. 
It is unintelligible, for instance, that man's spiritual 
force should be able so thoroughly to transform the 
material received from without, — that modern science, 
for example, should have produced a picture of nature 
so totally different from that given by sense-impressions. 
It would also be unintelligible that man, a mere piece 
of a mysterious machine, should take interest in the 
general condition of his environment, assume responsi- 
bility for it, and feel himself driven by his conscience to 
battle against its evils. And yet this it is above all 
else which gives the social movement its impelling power. 

But even assuming that there is no difficulty in under- 
standing man's entry upon a campaign of help and prog- 
ress, yet how little depth can the merely naturalistic 
culture allow to his activities ! For as it has to deal 
with elements that are unalterably given and can do 
nothing more than change their position, it is bound to 
regard all hope of an inner renewal of mankind as a 
deceitful illusion. Yet it was this hope which inspired 
the activities of the great reformers not only in the re- 
ligious, but also in every other domain. They were not 
content with just changing the position of this or that 
in a given state of things. They wished to open up 
fresh sources of activity ; they sought a new, purer, and 
truer humanity; they fought against the artificial, ex- 
ternal, decadent character of average civilised life; 
and all the time they were filled with a passionate long- 
ing and an unwavering hope for the realisation of a truer, 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 59 

fresher life, all of them inspired in last resort by the con- 
viction: " Except ye become as little children, ye shall 
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

Moreover, this inhibition of all attempt to get back to 
the creative sources of life is no mere article of theory ; 
it inevitably depresses life's actual energy. For it lies 
at the root of that almost superstitious faith which 
prevails to-day in the efficacy of outward arrangements, 
laws, and associations ; and it also accounts for the dis- 
belief in creative deed and in man's inner capacity to 
rise. The naturalistic culture can seek salvation only 
from without. 

At the same time we may not deny that the more 
unprejudiced abandonment to the outside world and the 
keener interest in its concerns have been productive of 
much that is new : they have made life richer, kept it 
from over-hasty conclusions and exerted a fruitful in- 
fluence on its formation as a whole. But all this at once 
becomes problematic and perverse when naturalism seeks 
to control the whole life and stamp itself upon every 
part of it. There is a great difference between spirit 
simply finding the world more and more important and 
stimulating, and sinking itself altogether in the world so 
that it becomes entirely submerged and swallowed up by 
it. That the latter alternative implies an inner destruc- 
tion of lif e would at once become obvious, were it not for 
the fact that the naturalistic culture has constantly sup- 
plemented its own deficiencies from other thought- 
worlds, and idealised its own values by bending round 
in an idealistic direction. It has indeed borrowed 
largely from the very system which it is most zealously 
concerned to destroy. The only reason why it has been 
able to command the approval of our time and even 



60 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

arouse its enthusiasm is that it has been working within 
the old spiritual atmosphere which is still permeated with 
idealism. This, however, means that the naturalistic 
culture, in virtue of an inward dialectic, destroys itself 
through its own advance. For such advance must be 
constantly weakening and dissipating the very element 
which the naturalistic culture itself cannot dispense with. 
In proportion as it ceases to be supplemented by idealism, 
its limitations become more apparent; it is less able 
to uphold its claim as the guide of life ; it has a more 
and more narrowing and destructive effect. But if all 
this be true and the naturalistic culture be really bur- 
dened with so many problems, then how can we allow 
it to set our standards and appoint our ends? Its 
uncompromising resistance to Christianity merely states 
the fact of an irreconcilable opposition between the two, 
it does not imply that the naturalistic culture is triumph- 
ant. We need not fear the contradiction of that which 
itself contains such contradictions. 

(b) The Valuation of Human Nature 

If early Christian times were prone to depreciate man 
and trust as little as possible to his strength, — thereby 
the better to exalt divine might and grace, ■ — the modern 
world, on the other hand, sets a high value on human 
strength and greatness. It is this valuation which sus- 
tains and inspires the whole structure of modern civili- 
sation. Capacity and achievement have each assisted 
the other, and thus man's confidence in himself has con- 
tinually been increased. 

But this exaltation of man can be understood in two 
ways, and can rest on two different bases. It may either 
be that man grows in importance because he becomes 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 61 

inwardly related to creative life-forces, or again because 
he becomes more effective and self-confident in dealing 
with his immediate environment. The dawn and the 
zenith of modern culture were both dominated by 
the former conviction; the latter, however, was the 
controlling factor in the naturalistic culture which 
gained ground increasingly during the nineteenth cen- 
tury. The Reformation, no doubt, augmented man's 
powers very considerably. It infused a fresh courage 
into life and a more independent spirit. But it did 
this not through heightening man's self-confidence, 
but rather through the revelation of an immediate 
relationship of the soul to God. Thus it was God who 
bestowed the power and to whom, in last resort, every- 
thing was referred. Of man's own capacity the Reformers 
thought even more meanly than did the Church from 
which they separated. The Enlightenment, again, 
though much less clear as to the religious meaning of life, 
had yet no wish to ground itself upon man in the 
abstract. If its leading thinkers constituted reason the 
guide of life, they were at the same time very zealous 
to see that the human reason was anchored in the divine, 
since in no other way could it gain support and credi- 
bility: man's greatness and dignity indeed were due 
solely to his participation in this reason, and not in any 
way to his sensory equipment. This belief persisted 
also in later expressions of life, notably in German 
Humanism. Systems of this kind found the real reason 
of man's pre-eminence in the fact that, by virtue of his 
connexion with the deepest sources of existence, he 
could share the experiences of the universe and find 
himself inwardly related to the depth and the breadth 
of it. He, alone of all the beings known to us, becomes 



62 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

a microcosm ; he alone, as a rational being, can take an 
independent stand and shape lif e by his own decision ; 
he alone, in virtue of this freedom, can assert his superi- 
ority against all merely naturalistic nature. No one 
has depicted the wealth of human life and being more 
vividly and attractively than Goethe, but at the same 
time no one was more anxious than he to keep man in a 
wide cosmic setting. 

A conviction of this kind, once firmly planted in the 
modern world, gave a distinctive character to man's 
life and effort. His soul was beset with momentous 
tasks ; new heights beckoned him onwards ; eternal 
standards of thought and conduct regulated his action, 
kept it continually advancing, and lifted his gaze beyond 
the limits of the immediate present. Man was an ideal 
to himself. 

Then came the move towards the naturalistic culture 
and the rejection of all inward connexions. Man be- 
comes limited entirely to his immediate existence, and 
the one and only goal of action is the state of man him- 
self, his subjective condition, his happiness. It is easily 
intelligible that, when everything else became uncertain, 
man should still seem to persist and with him his striving 
for happiness. This seemed of all things the most im- 
mediate and unquestionable. Feeling and action were 
nowhere more easily aroused than in the relation of man 
to man. Thus Feuerbach's saying becomes perfectly 
intelligible: "God was my first thought, reason my 
second, man my third and last." It is certainly true 
that even when religion and metaphysics lost their 
lustre, the direct social relations between man and man 
still left problems in abundance and it was an advantage 
to be able to treat them without introducing metaphysi- 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 63 

cal complications. But away at the back of this hu- 
manistic development there lies also a question of prin- 
ciple, a question which no one to-day can evade. 
The earlier systematisations of life, — religion and im- 
manental idealism alike, — were far too narrow and 
aristocratic. They contented themselves too exclusively 
with bringing spiritual goods within the reach of man- 
kind in general and keeping them there, regarding the 
even-handed distribution of them to individual men 
merely as a secondary matter. Thus the majority were 
but little affected inwardly by the spiritual movement, 
and the injurious effects of this did not fail to show them- 
selves. We too see them in the startling defection from 
religion at the present day. It must, therefore, become 
a great and necessary task to draw individual men more 
and more into the movement and increase their share, 
so far as possible, in the spiritual as well as in the material 
possession of the race. To do this cannot but heighten 
the strength and sincerity of our common life. If the 
naturalistic culture apply itself to this task with more 
than ordinary zeal, no one will take it amiss. But the 
matter of supreme importance continues always to be 
the whole man, and it is by the service rendered to him 
that the value of any particular activity is to be esti- 
mated. What is there left of him, however, when the 
naturalistic culture takes away all that concerns his 
relation to God or a universal reason, and his whole 
life comes to consist in an intercourse with sense- 
environment ? What is he other than a natural being 
endowed with a few spiritual traits which can never, 
on this soil, grow together into a whole and become ade- 
quate to deal with natural impulses ? And if the one 
and only goal of his effort should be his own well-being, — 



64 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

the improvement of his own condition, — and everything 
he does should have reference to this and be measured 
by its contribution to it, the result could not be other 
than a great limitation and abasement of life. The 
effort put forth would always remain in bondage to the 
narrow self in all its grasping paltriness ; it could never 
live into the object and be guided by its necessities, 
never seek to become inwardly united with men in the 
bonds of love and loyalty. Man would be always 
prisoner to himself. However wide the scope of his 
activity, he would yet be irresistibly fettered, like a 
chained beast, by the limitations of his own narrow 
sphere. Any objective goals he might reach must be 
for him only a means of subserving his subjective state, 
and thus treated they can neither win his wholehearted 
devotion nor reveal their own depth : this they can do 
only when treated as ends in themselves. If man, how- 
ever, when limited to himself, falls a prey to pettiness 
and narrowness and drags down everything that he 
touches, then it is impossible for him to find any true 
satisfaction even in success. For close on the heels of 
pleasure comes the feeling of inward hollowness. Our 
own times bear incontrovertible witness to the truth that 
heightened enjoyment does not of itself bring genuine 
satisfaction. 

But the naturalistic culture has not yet played its 
trump-card. This consists in the firm cohesion of in- 
dividuals such as is effected by the union of mankind 
into an organised band of workers. This, as we saw, 
appeared to relieve life of all pettiness and secure its 
forward advance. Through the combination of in- 
dividual forces in a common struggle with the environ- 
ment, life achieved a virile self -consciousness. That 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 65 

one man's efforts should depend on those of others 
seemed to induce also a harmony of inward disposition 
and to guarantee a spiritual solidarity. The opening 
up of ever wider prospects and the constant increase of 
human capacity encouraged man to form a high estimate 
of himself and his work, to seek fulfilment of all his 
wishes within his own sphere and through the medium 
of his own exertion, and even to become an object of 
veneration to himself. 

With this fresh development life has indeed struck 
new paths. Under this new dispensation we are im- 
mersed in concrete actualities; we are witnessing the 
development of an imposing civilisation of work, which 
earlier times never so much as dreamt of. With serene 
confidence we are advancing towards a future of limit- 
less prospect. But because this civilisation of work 
knows no limit to its outward expansion, it does not 
follow that it is likewise devoid of inner restriction. We 
have no assurance that what uplifts and satisfies man 
in one particular direction is therefore able to fill his 
whole life, to become his whole life. Man is after all 
more than an " animated tool" (Aristotle). In the midst 
of all his work he still remains an independent soul, 
and the soul does not lose itself in the work, but keeps its 
own distinct identity and returns ever and again from 
the work to itself. As certainly as the thinking being 
can make a general survey of individual occurrences 
and endeavour to unify them, so certainly must he 
demand from work not merely outward result but in- 
ward furtherance. Even work is still experience for 
the soul and insists on being valued as such, and this 
implies the appearance of new standards of measure- 
ment which work itself must recognise. And from this 



66 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

point of view it soon becomes evident that the advantages 
of work are by no means pure gain, that disadvantages 
follow in their wake, and that all the achievements of 
work leave one problem still unsolved, namely, the wel- 
fare of man as a whole. This problem may for a time 
be pushed into the background, but it cannot be banished 
for ever. 

The soul of the thinking being demands a spiritual 
freedom and seeks in this a content of life. Work 
directs effort to the object and rivets it there so closely 
that the soul becomes alienated from itself. Work 
dissects, whereas the soul demands unity. The soul's 
life cannot find satisfaction without having developed 
the whole range of its powers. Work employs a small 
fraction of power, a fraction which becomes ever smaller 
in proportion as work becomes more widely ramified. 
The soul cannot find the spiritual freedom which it 
seeks in merely running through one experience after 
another; it must survey them all together and bring 
them into a unity. To change it must oppose a fixed 
centre. Work, within the confines of naturalistic 
culture, throws man into a current of ceaseless activity 
which makes him a complete slave to the passing 
moment and allows him no opportunity for self-reflection 
and self-deepening. 

All this goes to show that work takes in only a cer- 
tain tract of life, not its whole range and, in particular, 
not its deepest source. We shall see that work, qua 
spiritual, can succeed only in so far as it is fed at this 
source, in so far as it is a message and emanation from 
a life that is spiritually free. Just as work becomes 
characteristic only when man is more than his work, 
so the civilisation founded upon work must, if it is to 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 67 

be more than a soulless mechanism, rest on a deeper 
life in humanity. The problems of human intercourse 
also point to the existence of this greater depth. For 
it is clear that this intercourse is not synonymous with 
union for purposes of work. It is not sufficient that 
human forces should mingle and combine in active ex- 
pression merely. We demand also a relationship of 
soul to soul, a life of fellowship, mutual understanding 
and sympathy. We do not wish to be indifferent to 
each other in our inward experience any more than in 
our outward life. But here the civilisation of mere 
work fails us wholly. However closely it may link men 
together outwardly, it is content to leave their souls 
completely isolated. However successfully individual 
achievements may combine to produce a common result, 
as, for example, in the case of a great building or a com- 
plicated mechanical structure, yet such combination 
does not readily give rise to mutual love, friendly sym- 
pathy, inner co-operation. Thus there was good ground 
for the statement that the ordinary relation subsisting 
between individual members of a great official organisa- 
tion among us was one of "semi-hostile neutrality" 
(J. Goldstein). That divergences of sentiment among 
co-workers may go so far as to amount to bitterest 
enmity is indeed clearly shown by the social struggles 
of the present day. Is it not true that, despite the growth 
and systematisation of work, mankind to-day is becoming 
more and more split up into opposing cliques and fac- 
tions, and that amid all our technical triumphs we as 
men are gradually drifting into a babylonian confusion 
of speech ? 

In short, living man, man as a whole, does not simply 
melt into his work. But in so far as he keeps his identity, 



68 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

he insists upon his rights ; he is not content to find help 
and satisfaction for his own life only, but longs and 
strives for the spiritual uplifting and true well-being 
of the whole of humanity. Yet how little can the na- 
turalistic culture avail him here, removing as it does all 
possibility of an inward change, all chance of penetrating 
to new depths ! The only contribution it can offer to 
this great problem is just the hope that as men mingle 
in social intercourse all that is good and true may com- 
bine together and the false and evil may be separated 
out. Somehow or other in the course of our social life 
unquestionable truths are to rise out of the welter of 
conflicting opinions, and common goals are to prove 
more potent than clashing individual interests. Hence 
the belief in the cumulative reason of the multitude, and 
with it a confidence in the power of numbers. The more 
men meet and work together, the more authoritative does 
the position of reason seem to be and the more certain 
the rejection of all that is petty and perverse. Thus 
runs a creed which is already centuries old, but which 
has waited till modern times for its full development. 

Such a creed, however, finds but a sorry basis in the 
naturalistic system, nor has it the support of ex- 
perience. Combination cannot raise man's collective 
status, unless it be under the control of an aim which 
overrides individual ends; it must be induced by the 
pressure of important tasks; it must be guided by an 
idea. At one time, state and fatherland may make the 
individual entirely oblivious to his own welfare in his 
anxiety for the whole ; at another time the idea of hu- 
manity may stimulate a man to the greatest sacrifices. 
But how could the merely naturalistic culture, bringing 
men together in purely external ways, achieve results 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 69 

like these or even make them intelligible? From the 
mere contact of primitive elements, which is the furthest 
point it can reach, the utmost that can be obtained is 
certain average values, certain mass-movements, widely 
diffused workings which are levelling rather than up- 
lifting in character. Any gain which may accrue from 
the weeding out of individual self-will and caprice is 
dearly purchased at the cost of smoothing away all 
character and shaping life on a conventional pattern. 
History shows us with convincing clearness that the 
great onward movements, and in particular the great 
spiritual revivals, have arisen through an uncom- 
promising antagonism to the average conditions of the 
environment : they were no mere summing-up of these 
conditions ; one and all they Hf ted lif e on to a higher 
level than that of sorry mediocrity. The marvellous 
symmetry that delights us in the masterpieces of Greek 
art, and the confident idealism which breathes from the 
works of Greek philosophy are decisively and often even 
consciously opposed to the unrest of the Greek work- 
a-day world and its over-anxiety for the " goods that men 
compete for" (Aristotle). Again, when the Reformation 
brought out with renewed emphasis the fundamentally 
ethical character of Christianity, this was not the result 
of any friendly support from existing conditions. It 
was not a precipitate, as it were, of the environment. 
It originated, rather, in an honourable and holy anger 
with a lax and frivolous age. The utmost that mass- 
movements can do in such matters is to prepare the way 
or to set certain questions. In the attempt to answer 
them clearly and distinctly we shall soon find, — as 
our own times show with illuminating force, — that 
in these things a mere process of summation fails entirely. 



7 o CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

The small can never become great through any amount 
of accumulation, any more than an unlimited aggrega- 
tion of dwarf plants can produce a giant tree. Nay 
more, in the human sphere the small only becomes 
smaller by being accumulated, for in the process it be- 
comes more self-conscious and the more confident of 
being able to dispense with all inward connexion. It 
is this self-consciousness of the small which produces 
that mediocrity and meanness of disposition that is such 
a deadly foe to all spiritual creative activity. How 
ineffective as regards spiritual capacity is all the play 
of small forces which occupies the average human life ! 
For what do we find here ? Mere individual life-units 
whose claims and desires stretch out to infinity and 
who in all questions think first of their own interest, — ■ 
these units forced into connexion by the interlocking 
agency of civilised life, fairly well tamed too, but tamed 
only on the outside, so that at any moment the unbounded 
inward selfishness may break through. They regard 
each other with dull indifference or covetous envy, 
filled with an inner repugnance to all that is great, since 
greatness means for them only an oppressive burden; 
at the same time they wish to appear better than they 
are in the eyes of others and even in their own, and are 
therefore involved in constant hypocrisy. How should 
this sorry admixture, this unclean atmosphere, be the 
spiritual home of man and the primaeval source of human 
greatness ? 

Our political and social struggles are usually animated 
by the hope that a reshaping of the conditions of social 
intercourse along the fines now being pursued will in 
itself bring about an inward uplifting and effect indeed 
a complete renewal of mankind. This belief is cherished 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 71 

most strongly at the present day in the circles of social 
democracy. But its only real basis must lie in the con- 
viction that there is a greater depth in man's nature 
which the desired change will help to reveal more fully. 
If this conviction, however, be lacking, as it must be in 
the case of the naturalistic culture, then we need only 
look away from the excitement of the moment and try 
to survey the whole situation in order to see clearly 
how little comfort or hope there is in all such effort. 
Within the limits of the naturalistic culture the only 
thing to be gained by these struggles is the shifting of 
power from one spot to another. One man must give 
way in order that another may take his place. The 
upward aspirant may indeed cherish the hope that his 
victory will mean the advancement of the total welfare, 
but, the victory once won, it is the old story over again. 
In last resort we find everywhere the same man, the 
same impulses, the same passions, nor do we observe 
any growth in him when he comes before us in his col- 
lective aspect. 

The naturalistic culture is left then with still one hope, 
one refuge, — the hope, namely, that history, through 
the gradually accumulating achievements of the ages, 
will little by little raise the level of our life and lift us 
beyond ourselves. But here too we soon find ourselves 
in the same dilemma as that which met us in our con- 
sideration of social life : either history has a deeper 
and more inward significance, or it cannot achieve the 
results that are expected of it. The mere succession of 
epochs is not sufficient to effect a concentration of reason 
and an exclusion of unreason. Progress even in history 
requires decision, choice, direction, a higher power 
that transcends individual interests and opinions, a 



72 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

power which pursues truth and withstands error, even 
in the teeth of man's resistance. Since the naturalistic 
culture recognises no such power, it must regard his- 
torical succession as devoid of all inner connexion; the 
past can never fuse with the present so that they may 
form an inward unity; it must rather hang upon our 
life like a dead weight. Those who declare a life-or- 
death war upon religion should of all others be the first 
to recognise how untrue it is that the historic structure 
is, as it were, a spiritual pyramid erected by steady, quiet, 
constructive upbuilding; for their own action would 
imply a sharp break in historical continuity. What one 
age had achieved would be entirely forfeit for another, 
would only offend it and rouse its antagonism. 

Outward greatness with inward pettiness, wealth and 
diversity of achievement with hollow emptiness of spirit, 
— such is the mark of the merely naturalistic and hu- 
manistic culture. It cannot prevent small-mindedness 
from intruding into all the situations of life and enmesh- 
ing and degrading even work itself; it cannot prevent 
all our magnificent achievements, — scientific, artistic, 
and technical, — from being ofttimes mixed up with 
wofully narrow-minded views. In this connexion, 
moreover, the diffusion of culture among the masses, 
highly desirable in itself and even necessary though it 
may be, is bound to give rise to grave misgiving. Such 
a diffusion is certain to lower life's level unless the dis- 
tribution of power and material goods be accompanied 
by a pronounced increase in man's spiritual posses- 
sions, a first-hand production of spiritual goods. 
Where this is wanting, the spiritual life succumbs to 
man's merely natural state, and at the same time falls a 
prey to inward dissolution. It becomes very clearly 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 73 

evident then that man has no greater enemy than man 
himself. 

We are becoming to-day more and more conscious 
of the pettiness and hopelessness of the merely natural- 
istic culture. This in itself is a good sign and the first 
step towards improvement. We are not so easily 
deceived by those empty phrases about human great- 
ness and dignity which intoxicated the imagination of 
earlier times. In man as mere man we are beginning 
to see smallness rather than greatness. We are feeling 
ourselves so annoyingly, obtrusively enveloped by the 
pettily human, the "all too human/ ' so wearied and 
oppressed by it, that the deeper minds among us are 
seized with an intense dislike of it all and a strong desire 
to be free from it. Had it not been for this longing, the 
strange idea of the "superman" would never have ex- 
cited so much stir. But if man finds in himself so much 
to perplex him and fails in every attempt to give his 
life a meaning and value from the standpoint of his 
immediate existence, then the time has gone, or is going, 
when every attempt to press beyond that immediate 
existence was regarded as a pernicious error. The 
merely humanistic culture has, in the course of the 
world's history, been subjected to the test of experience 
and has failed to stand the test. Its own development 
has been the means of its outliving itself and, becoming 
exhausted, has indeed revealed its insurmountable 
limitations. Thus the humanistic culture has not 
succumbed to outside attack; it has supplied its own 
convincing refutation. 



74 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

(c) The Inward Shaping of Work 

That work does not fill the whole of life we have seen 
clearly, but our problems are not at an end ; they reach 
right into the inner structure of work, and here too it 
is obvious that the task so nobly conceived by the modern 
movement as a whole is coming to a sorry standstill 
through being viewed too narrowly, and that here too 
there is danger lest gain turn into loss. 

It was an increase of life-energy which caused modern 
man to break with the traditional method of regarding 
and dealing with the external world. The old view 
transferred man's own psychical experience too directly 
and immediately to his environment. Man and world, 
subject and object, merged so easily into one that neither 
factor could develop freely its own distinctive individu- 
ality, and life as a whole never attained to full clearness 
and breadth; nor could it possibly do so until that 
opposition was recognised. "In the Middle Ages both 
aspects of consciousness, — that which faces the world 
and that which faces man's own inner life, — lay, as it 
were, dreaming or half awake under a common veil. 
The veil was woven of faith, childish prejudice, and il- 
lusion. Seen through its meshes, the world and history 
were clothed in marvellous colours, but man recognised 
himself only as race, nation, sect, corporation, family, 
or under some other form of the general life. It was in 
Italy first that this veil was rent away. There a new 
view dawned on men, an objective way of regarding 
and treating the state and the things of this world 
generally. But at the same time the subjective side 
asserted its full power ; man became a spiritual individ- 
ual and recognised himself as such " (Jakob Burckhardt). 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 75 

It is pre-eminently this which gives modern life and 
effort their distinctive stamp, — that power and the 
material opposed to it, subject and object, are now clearly 
distinguishable : each follows its own path, each de- 
velops its own particular character. This changes life 
from its foundations upwards into a task of an all- 
comprehensive kind, that of holding inwardly firm to 
the object which is moving farther away from it, though 
by no means vanishing altogether. The psychical 
emotion now finds an object with which it must come to 
terms. It has to overcome resistance and in the attempt 
to do so becomes itself stronger and more developed. 
This whole process of separation makes for a more vigor- 
ous winnowing of life and the extrusion, so far as possible, 
of all narrowly human tendency, all anthropomorphism 
both of concept and of aim. This is why the old concept 
of personality proved unsatisfactory when applied to 
cosmic problems. This winnowing and distinction are 
presupposed in modern science and in the development 
of a historical consciousness with its clear separation 
between present and past ; they are presupposed also in 
that keener scrutiny and more active interest which 
modern man displays in dealing with actual conditions. 
Through this separation and subsequent reunion of 
psychical emotion and the material presented to it, of 
subject and object, activity for the first time develops 
into real work, which embraces the opposition and keeps 
the two aspects of it together. 

In the prosecution of this task, however, two stages 
are clearly distinguishable. The aspects referred to may 
remain in juxtaposition and merely outward contact, 
or a comprehensive whole may be formed which brings 
the two aspects into more effective relation, allows them 



76 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

to interpenetrate and develops them in close conjunction 
with each other. The former kind of work is more 
mechanical, the latter only is genuinely spiritual in 
character. The one is the work of the artisan, the other 
of the artist. Whereas the former remains inwardly 
alien and indifferent to his object, the latter absorbs 
it into his very being, actually finds his being in it. 
The highest modern work follows the artist's model. 
For in the case of our great poets and thinkers, the object 
is not left outside like something alien, but it is trans- 
planted into the very soul and there vitalised. As power 
and the matter opposed to it thus meet together, life 
struggles forward from one level to another, aiming at 
realising itself as a whole. Its supreme task is now the 
attainment of a unifying power, a transcendent life 
whose kindling energy quickens what is dead, illumines 
what is dark, and guides the whole to spiritual unity. 
Thus for the first time work becomes creation. In the 
case of art, this is clear as day ; but the thinker likewise 
must be an artist in this sense, that he also may not 
allow his material to fall outside his moulding activity 
and stiffen into a distinct and separate existence, but 
must draw both subject and object, after duly dis- 
tinguishing between them, into a life-process that lifts 
them on to a higher level. He, like the artist, must 
not merely copy an outside existence. But this inward 
connexion of subject and object, this transcendence 
of their opposition, can come about only through a rev- 
olution in the situation as at first given, through the 
winning of a new life-level, a life of spiritual freedom, 
for which both subject and object are revelations and 
manifestations of a deeper-lying whole. 

Unless we win a new world, we should be forced to 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 77 

remain subject for ever to the power and limitations of 
this opposition, an opposition which spiritual creation 
alone can at once keep and overcome. Thus our modern 
era has to deal with a great problem of an inner kind : 
through rigorous elimination it has to reach new syn- 
theses of life, and to compensate for the necessary 
analysis by a process of positive construction. This 
brings the whole of its work face to face with new re- 
quirements, and must inevitably revolutionise all con- 
cepts, as, for example, the concept of personality. 

If work, then, be so closely bound up with spiritual 
creation, and must, if it is to succeed, be enveloped in an 
atmosphere of inward power, then its relationship to 
religion may indeed involve much perplexity, but it 
cannot give rise to any sharp antagonism. The case, of 
course, is very different when the rigidly naturalistic 
culture rejects root and branch both spiritual creation 
and inward power; but then it soon becomes obvious 
that work itself comes to a standstill ; it cannot complete 
the movement it has begun ; on the contrary, it becomes 
stiff and immobile and at the same time loses all inner 
vitality. Since, then, subject and object can no longer 
be inwardly connected and no vitalising soul can spring 
from their union, each must suffer a serious disablement. 
The object which no longer has any influx of life from 
the subject will lose more and more of its living colour 
and change ever more into a tissue of vague outlines, 
mere relations, empty forms, and formulas. On the 
other hand, the subject which no longer has any sure 
guide-post in the object will fall a prey to complete un- 
certainty and will vainly seek to cover its loss by empty 
yearning and brooding. 

It is a development such as this, a laming of activity 



78 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

full in the middle of its progress, which we see to-day 
in every branch of life as the result of a declension upon 
the naturalistic culture. Science can never venture, 
in a spirit of glad hopefulness, to rise to the level of 
knowledge, since this requires an appropriation and 
vitalising of the object. Her task is limited to the 
fixation, registration, and arrangement of phenomena 
which are inwardly alien to man ; she is bound to regard 
every vitalising concept as an encroachment on the part 
of the subject, as a deceitful will-o'-the-wisp. A treat- 
ment of history along these lines would necessarily 
confine itself to the conscientious compilation of all 
that can be ascertained to-day concerning the external 
characteristics of past ages, but every attempt to ensoul 
and vitalise them would be regarded uneasily as offend- 
ing the objectivity of an exact treatment. Similarly, too, 
for practical life. We can busy ourselves in improving 
the conditions around us; we can do very much for 
each other. But we cannot meet in inward communion ; 
we cannot share each other's inward growth. And least 
of all can we contemplate an inward uplifting of humanity. 
There is much complaint to-day about the formalism 
and bureaucracy of our social life ; but is it not merely 
the natural expression, the inevitable result of a life 
which is inwardly breaking up and therefore lacks any 
vitalising ideas ? Everywhere spirit is driven out to 
make room for a soulless but steady-going mechanism, 
and this is then termed exactness or objectivity. 
Human effort is hedged round on every side with limi- 
tations ; but it is one thing to be painfully conscious of 
these limitations and to struggle against them to the best 
of our power, and quite another thing to rejoice in them 
and to taboo everything that might let spirit into life. 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 79 

In conclusion, man's life to-day is rent by the op- 
position between subjective emotionalism and soulless 
objectivity; his effort is thrown now on this side, now 
on that; and since the results of neither side, taken 
singly, subserve the development of the whole man, 
the final issue is a deep discontent, despite all brilliant 
outward successes. 

Under these circumstances it must inevitably happen 
that the great creative personalities who inspire work 
with a soul and are the natural leaders of men grow 
rarer and rarer, and departments such as religion, 
philosophy, and great art, which depend on such per- 
sonalities, become altogether stagnant. Technical de- 
velopment may indeed proceed with extraordinary 
rapidity, but it cannot compensate for the disappearance 
of vitalising spirit. Partisans of the naturalistic culture 
may find all this to be in perfect order and claim it as 
a triumph for their own views. Where there are no 
great problems there are also no great dangers ; life has 
reached a low enough level to feel itself secure against 
all serious complications. Mankind as a whole, how- 
ever, will pronounce a different verdict, for its own ex- 
perience will show that the supposed gain signifies in 
reality a surrender of all spiritual freedom and an abandon- 
ment to utter emptiness. In proportion as this feeling 
grows stronger, man's effort will inevitably take the form 
of a struggle for spiritual self-preservation, and once he 
puts his whole strength into this struggle, there need be 
no anxiety as to the issue. But surely this means the 
re-appearance of all the problems which the naturalistic 
culture thought it had settled for ever. 

It was the upheaval of Christianity and its rejection 
in many and various quarters that forced us to test what 



So CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

modern culture itself might be capable of. For the force 
of that rejection lay not so much in any particular 
argument as in a complete revolution of life as a whole, 
a revolution which guided man's thought and effort 
into new channels and, in the process, came increasingly 
into opposition with Christianity. If, then, Christianity 
find itself threatened by the advance of the new move- 
ment, it must feel a certain relief when the latter meets 
with insurmountable obstacles and comes to a standstill. 
It must regard such an event as freeing it from oppression 
and helping to pave the way to an unprejudiced valuation 
of its position, as a kind of indirect proof in fact, or 
at least as a warning against over-hasty conclusions. 

Now, as a matter of fact, it became perfectly evident 
that the modern movement was anything rather than a 
smooth and finally conclusive settlement. There is 
indeed something in it which no one can ultimately 
contest, something which cannot possibly be withdrawn. 
It has carried the life-process as a whole to a higher 
point of development, making it more alive, more free, 
more active. It has given man more virility and inde- 
pendence, thereby bringing him into a new relationship 
both to the world and to himself. But the movement was 
rather a beginning than an end ; it asked more than it 
could answer ; it involved man in a maze of perplexities. 
It was, moreover, impossible not to recognise that the 
mighty access of strength which it brought with it 
always presupposes, in actual working, something 
more than it is itself, something which serves it as sup- 
port and rallying-point, an inwardness of life and a 
superiority to the world which it can neither dispense 
with nor yet evolve from its own resources. This deeper 
basis of life kept the modern world inwardly at one with 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 81 

Christianity, despite all its outward antagonism. Are 
we to call it accidental that most of our leading modern 
thinkers have been unwilling to abandon Christianity 
altogether, however sharply they may have criticised its 
traditional form, and have striven to come to an agree- 
ment with it in precisely that which constituted the 
really essential part of their conviction ? In the inward 
texture of modern creative work, a disposition to aban- 
don Christianity and a disposition to return to it are 
often strangely intermingled. It is obvious that no 
fully satisfactory explanation of the matter has yet been 
given. 

An irreconcilable opposition to Christianity, on the 
other hand, arose, as we have seen, from the tendency 
of the modern movement to define itself merely as a 
naturalistic culture, a culture which permits man to be 
wholly absorbed into his environment. But in propor- 
tion as this culture secured ascendency over the whole 
field, developed its own distinctive character more for- 
cibly, and rejected more decisively all borrowed accre- 
tions, the more clearly did it reveal its inwardly destruc- 
tive character. For all the results that had been reached 
through man's keener preoccupation with the visible 
world presupposed the help and support of a spiritual 
life which was superior to that world. The withdrawal 
of this spiritual life meant that existence broke up into 
detached fragments and that the whole status of life 
sank lower and lower. The world became a mere jux- 
taposition of unintelHgible elements, and the life which 
was bound up with it lost all inner unity, all independence, 
all distinctive content. Man became identified with 
the welfare of his narrower self, and the resulting small- 
ness of outlook was emphasised, not enlarged, by the 



82 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

growing tendency of mankind to aggregate into masses. 
Work, cut off from all that is broadest and deepest in 
life, became soulless and mechanical. Man was torn 
and tossed to and fro between this mechanism and an 
empty subjectivity. Such a result can commend 
itself only to shallow souls who can renounce a spiritual 
self without a pang : mankind as a whole can never 
accept it with pleasure or even with resignation. But 
the only refuge from such destruction is to be sought 
through a sympathetic understanding of the task which 
Christianity undertook, — the task, namely, of giving 
life a soul and leading it to a height serene above all the 
complexities of existence. Thus a complete change 
passes over man's mood. Again he is possessed with a 
longing for more depth of life, for emancipation from the 
pressure of the world and the hollowness of the merely 
humanistic culture, for more simplicity of heart and more 
spontaneity of creation. It is true that this longing 
sometimes flows along as an undercurrent merely, while 
the surface-life still hugs negation and continues to 
regard destruction as emancipation. But the under- 
current is growing perceptibly stronger ; the soul of the 
age is with it ; it holds the promise of the future. 

Meanwhile it must not be supposed that this rapproche- 
ment of our time with the soul of Christianity implies 
in any way a simple return to Christianity in its tradi- 
tional form. For however many the limitations of the 
modern movement may be, the change it has wrought 
not merely in externals but also in the inward life is of 
far too momentous a nature not to have placed a deep 
gulf between us and the Christian tradition. It is just 
this which causes the tension and insecurity of the 
present situation, that we can see clearly the unsatis- 



REFUSING TO REJECT CHRISTIANITY 83 

factoriness of the new movement and yet cannot go back 
to the old just as it was. The more we reflect on the 
situation and the more earnestly we seek for some 
stable support, the more clearly do we perceive that we 
are in the midst of a spiritual crisis, a crisis more acute 
and more far-reaching than any other age of history 
has passed through. For even the bitterest conflicts 
of other times were fought within a world of ideas which 
was common to both parties in the fray, and there were 
certain fundamental convictions which they left entirely 
untouched. To-day, however, it would seem, at least 
if we trust our first impressions, that the whole ground is 
giving way beneath us. Doubt never before penetrated 
so deep into fundamentals ; there were never such pas- 
sionate and widely diverging disputes as to the main 
trend of life, nor did human consciousness ever before 
find the whole substance of life so torn and thinned by 
the brooding, groping spirit of reflexion. 

This critical situation is one which all present-day 
movements must take into account, and it contains a 
very definite indication also as to the treatment of the 
religious problem. Every department of life shares in 
the general upheaval, and no stability can be secured 
for one without being secured for the whole. Thus 
the religious problem cannot be treated in isolation ; it 
hangs together with the general problem of life. We 
shall therefore never arrive at any settled conviction 
regarding Christianity without searching reflexion on 
what is going forward in fife as a whole, and without 
some understanding as to how in the strength of this 
whole we may hope to become competent to deal with 
the problems of the present day. Indeed it is not putting 
the matter too strongly to say that, in view of the general 



84 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

upheaval of life, there can be no revival of religion with- 
out a revival of the spiritual life in general, and that a 
religious reform has no chance of success unless it be 
closely linked with a wider spiritual movement. Scien- 
tific discussion is, therefore, acting in the interests of 
religion itself, when for a time it allows all direct 
religious reference to remain in abeyance that it may 
first of all make itself to some extent familiar with the 
trend of fife as a whole. Only from the starting-point 
thus gained is there any hope of getting beyond the 
region of mere questions and pressing forward to an 
answer. 



B. FOUNDATION OF THE ANSWER 

I. Dawn of a New Life 

(a) The Problem 

The hope to achieve advance through a mapping-out 
of the present situation would seem at first sight to 
be ill-conceived. For a mere bird's-eye view of that 
situation with all its contradictions could not take us 
any further. It would rather increase the confusion, 
just as to-day the habit, — no less popular than con- 
venient, — of mere detached reflexion on the ways and 
shortcomings of the age only succeeds in involving us 
in greater uncertainty. The only helpful kind of con- 
templation would be that which had set itself to dis- 
covery, which showed us more in things than we are 
wont to see to-day. Such contemplation, however, 
we are actually entering upon when we realise and do 
justice to the fact that the limitations and contradictions 
of the present position do not originate in a source 
outside us but spring directly from our own life : this 
life must be somehow superior to them in order to feel 
them as defects and blemishes. As, in things spiritual, 
every pang betrays a depth in the soul that feels it, 
so also a smallness, which is not accepted as natural 
and inevitable but rouses in us a sense of pain and wrong, 
proclaims a real greatness, hidden and remote though 
it may be from superficial observation. Hegel is right 
when he says that the man who is conscious of a limita- 

8s 



86 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

tion is already, in a certain sense, beyond it. There is 
something in us men that refuses to let us become mere 
dependent fragments of a soulless world-machinery. 
To rivet all life and effort to the individual's subjective 
state seems to us a degrading slavery. We rebel 
against the shallowness and insincerity of a merely 
humanistic culture, a cult of man and the many ; we 
struggle against the mechanising of work and the for- 
saking of all ideas. But how could this be possible if 
the limits of the naturalistic culture were really the 
limits of all human life, if there were not some active 
longing within us for an experience of the Whole, for 
inward independence, for a spiritual content of activity ? 
Moreover, the thought of the growth and increase of 
power which so fills our minds to-day could not leave us so 
conscious of hollowness in the midst of all excitement, 
if there were not within us something which reaches 
beyond the power and seeks to link it to a wider life. 
Even the divisions of life as it branches out in various 
directions cannot be felt as painful, save by a being whose 
nature demands an embracing unity. If we have no 
such longing, then why should we have any misgiving 
in handing life over to the guidance of impulse and allow- 
ing it to fall into detached sections, as did earlier ages ? 

Looked at from this point of view, the present situa- 
tion at once takes on a very different aspect. Before 
we were mainly conscious of its limitations and contra- 
dictions, we were not so alive to the fact that it was the 
age which was experiencing the limitations and eliciting 
the contradictions. Once we do justice to this side of 
the matter, and at the same time, learn to appreciate 
the age as a whole, we become aware that its life is 
richer than we thought : it is swayed by strong spiritual 



DAWN OF A NEW LIFE 87 

passion, by a deep longing to make life more dependent 
on personal decision and to shape it by personal effort ; 
it is absorbed in a keen struggle to secure a master-posi- 
tion from which the whole environment can be brought 
under control. Our age could not be so deeply stirred 
as it is, did it not contain many elements of reaction 
against its own limitations. We feel many things as 
defects simply because we are asserting greater claims 
and are forced to assert them in virtue of our historical 
position. From this point of view it must be reckoned 
one of the advantages of our time that it should have 
laid hold on so wide a range of problems and be working 
so zealously for their solution. It obviously contains 
far more than was revealed by first impressions, which 
always take account of achieved results rather than of 
forces still actively operating. 

But even such reflexions on the greater depth of life 
to-day do not take us far towards the solution of our 
problem. Life may be deeper, but this has not lessened 
the complications and divisions under which we groan, 
nor does it open up any means of encountering them 
successfully. Such countermovement would be possible 
only on the condition that life, irrespective of all con- 
nexion with this particular epoch, became independent 
of the human situation. It would have to be unified 
into a system of its own, or, we might say, into one general 
movement. Its immediate content must be transformed, 
so that it would no longer be a mere series of occurrences 
at isolated points, but could oppose to such distractedness 
a vigorous self-concentration, thus becoming something 
whole and firmly established within itself. It is only a 
whole of this kind that could develop a distinctive 
content, exercise a distinctive function, and with assured 



88 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

authority act as measure and guide of human action. 
Unless life have some such authoritative fixity over 
against human dealings, we can never arrive at any sure 
goal, any inner fellowship, any independence of time's 
fluctuations. To us modern men, however, taught by 
long experience of the world's work, that authoritative 
fixity can never come from without, since we see every- 
thing around us through the medium of our own life 
and thought and transform it in the seeing. It can 
come indeed in no other way than through a concentra- 
tion of life itself, through the disclosure of a secure 
capital, so to speak, belonging to the race, an unassail- 
able and primitive possession, which can never be 
derived from any specific part of life but only from the 
whole. If, then, the concentration of life within itself 
does not provide a power which is superior to all the 
changing conditions, moods, and conceits of man, if 
it does not free life from human casualness and uncer- 
tainty, our effort must in last resort prove fruitless; 
our whole life must become a chaos of intersecting and 
opposing movements, and the strength which any 
particular one of them could exert would decide the 
justice of its claim, if indeed the question of justice and 
truth had not to be altogether eliminated, while we 
surrendered ourselves wholly to the power of this dark 
and blind impulsion. We cannot, however, calmly 
accept such spiritual suicide without weighing most 
carefully the chances of escape. And if the only chance 
lie in life's becoming inwardly independent, we shall 
then be obliged to try this direction in preference to 
all others. Thus the question of questions now resolves 
itself into this : whether, within the human sphere, we 
can trace any such growth of independence. This, 



DAWN OF A NEW LIFE 89 

however, is a question of fact ; neither subtle reasoning 
nor bold speculation can supply the answer, but ex- 
perience and experience alone, — not indeed an experi- 
ence which springs into being with all the immediacy of 
a single impression, but one which requires that the 
manifold shall be connected and all contradictions 
transcended. Let us see then what this experience 

tells us. 

(b) The Solution 

To the question which has been forced upon us in the 
above manner we reply with confidence, Yes. It is a 
fact that we do find in the human sphere a concentration 
of life such as we are seeking, not indeed as something 
securely and completely within our grasp, but as a 
movement independent of our caprices, as a process 
which is continually advancing and taking shape. We 
find it in that which, in opposition to natural existence, 
is called spiritual life. A new stage of life is here easily 
recognisable so soon as we turn from its first dawn in 
man to a survey of its own distinctive features. 

Spiritual fife is an inward process, but not all inward 
process is spiritual fife. That is to say, below the human 
stage and to a considerable distance also along the 
human level, there is a soul-life which, despite all its 
various manifestations, is yet subject to a rigid inner 
limitation. The limitation is this: that the soul-life 
subserves the natural self-preservation of the individual 
or the species, and, looked at more closely, reveals itself 
as a fragment of an extended nature-process. As this 
life receives its stimulus from without and directs its 
activities towards outside achievement, its forms natu- 
rally correspond with the mechanism of the external world. 
Any elements of newness that may make their appearance 



9 o CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

within it do not fuse into a whole or constitute a kingdom 
of their own. It is therefore very intelligible that men of 
science, who simply identify nature with the universe, 
should regard the soul-life as a mere dependency of 
nature. But now a further development takes place 
within man's sphere, — not over the whole of it, but at 
least in one particular direction. The inner world be- 
comes independent and, in the process, not only displays 
forms of life that are distinctive of itself, but strives 
also after an all-inclusive coherent system. It finds its 
task not in outside achievement but in the perfecting 
of itself and the working out of all its possibilities. How 
great the change and development thus brought into 
our life, we shall seek to indicate, at least in certain 
particulars. 

Our immediate environment is a world of purely 
individual elements, elements which are linked together 
only by juxtaposition in space and succession in time. 
On the other hand, wherever spiritual life makes its 
appearance, totalities spring up and form themselves into 
inner systems : the worth of the individual is measured 
not by his direct achievement, but first and foremost by 
its value for the whole, the individual piece of knowl- 
edge by its significance for the search after truth, the 
individual experience by its meaning for happiness. The 
whole, in general outline, appears as operative from the 
very outset, imposing its norms on the individual element, 
but when the outline is filled in, we see it as the goal 
which all effort subserves. In a progress of this kind, 
from outline to filling-in, there is much more self-move- 
ment of the soul than where individual occurrences are 
fitted mechanically together. Life becomes far more 
of a deed. 



DAWN OF A NEW LIFE 91 

Moreover, as the elements in this case are linked to- 
gether inwardly rather than through outward contact, 
the very form which the work assumes evinces also an 
inward fellow-feeling. The efforts of individuals do not 
run indifferently alongside of each other. Science, for 
example, is not a mere juxtaposition of individual 
opinions, but the worker who puts forth effort at any 
particular spot is conscious that his effort is girt about 
and sustained by an effort of the whole to which 
he willingly yields his contribution. Only from this 
standpoint is it possible to explain and justify the con- 
viction which has been the main stimulus to human 
effort, — that the truth won at any particular point is 
valid and binding throughout. If there were no inward 
unity of life over against all the divisions of mankind, 
such a conviction would be absolutely unintelligible. 
Truth could not possibly be valid for all men, unless 
it held an authoritative position towards all that is of 
merely human quality. 

But as the spiritual movement rises triumphant over 
the juxtaposition of space, so also does it triumph over 
the succession of time. It is not in bondage to the idio- 
syncrasies of particular epochs with their changing con- 
ditions and requirements, but it seeks to discriminate 
in the constitution of time between the perishable and the 
imperishable. By means of spiritual creation, it seeks 
to transcend time and to wrest some abiding substance 
from the chances and changes of our human condition. 
Only so can the different epochs co-operate in a common 
task ; only so can the creation of the moment endure for 
all time. Here, as before, what is to be valid for all time 
must be superior to all mere time. Here, too, we find a 
notable increase of activity. 



9 2 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

Thus with the movement towards spirituality two ideas 
emerge which become dominant over life : the ideas of 
inward connexion and of eternity. But the change 
strikes yet deeper into the inner structure of life. Our 
consideration of the modern world has already shown us 
how the spiritual life effects a separation and reunion, 
how it first of all sunders power and resisting matter, 
subject and object, and then brings them together again 
through an uplif ting creative activity. Here the spiritual 
movement reveals itself first and foremost not as a mere 
swinging to and fro from one side of the pendulum to the 
other, but as an activity which embraces both sides 
and, setting the whole range of life in movement, may 
well be called a total activity. In the second place, 
again, the spiritual life here reveals itself as no mere 
utilisation of given elements, but as a source of inde- 
pendent life, as an inwardly uplifting power. Life 
is still in flux, and figures as a process of pressing forward 
and ch'mbing upward. The union it effects is no mere 
combination, but an opening up of new depths, spirit 
kindling spirit through mutual contact. 

To show how greatly the situation has changed, let 
us cite an illustration. We know how the advance of 
civilisation has gradually loosened the originally tight 
bond which united individuals into a community of 
family or race. We know how it has made individuals 
steadily freer in regard to each other, and how this 
process promises to culminate in a boundless egoism. 
But it is impossible for the spiritual nature of man to 
tolerate such a conclusion. He takes up arms against 
it. His chances of victory, however, depend upon his 
success in ennobling the individual elements, breaking 
down the walls of separation through the miracle of 



DAWN OF A NEW LIFE 93 

love, and, without damage to individuality, creating a 
new community which grows from within outwards. 
Were there no such development, no such birth of a new 
creature, all our trouble would be wasted. In the 
process of knowing, again, subject and object could never 
be brought together unless they were embraced in a 
higher unity. Once more we see that spiritual life is 
progress, climbing, development, not merely going to and 
fro within a given circle. 

As in all this separation and reunion, this transcend- 
ence of opposition, life gains greater breadth and more 
inward mobility, so also as it enters into spiritual action, 
it shifts its centre to a point beyond the merely reflective 
consciousness ; for this latter remains subject to the old 
opposition. 

Life, however, cannot operate as a whole over 
against detached occurrences, it cannot hold to- 
gether many diverse aspects, without developing a 
depth, giving itself a depth. But we cannot make this 
advance intelligible to ourselves save on the supposition 
that life forms within itself a home-centre whence 
it can act authoritatively and as a whole, instead of 
diffusing itself in mere isolated activities, and from 
that centre subdues and informs the manifold from 
within. This indicates an important distinction in 
our further conception of activity. There are activities 
which lie on the surface of life : a particular stimulus 
induces a particular response, without touching life 
inwardly and rousing it to activity as a whole. Again, 
there are other activities which are the expression of such 
a whole, activities in which the whole is vitally immanent 
and through which it steadfastly maintains itself. The 
former is a mere surface-activity, the latter a real 



94 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

activity. The surface-activity occupies far the- larger 
space in human life : it develops very many connexions 
with the outside world and arouses very many powers 
of the soul. But in all its operations it remains inwardly 
alien to man, since he never puts the whole of his soul 
into it, and therefore never experiences anything by its 
means. It is this which makes the general run of 
business so stale and unprofitable, — that with all its 
excitement and hurry it remains inwardly void and 
empty, that the workers show no soul of their own, 
and that they are therefore not really actors but only 
puppets pulled by the string of destiny. Now the 
spiritual life, by the development of that depth to which 
we have referred, takes us far beyond this stage. For 
it thus acquires an independent being of its own and an 
inward grading. The soul as a whole can now be 
present in the individual activity, rinding itself in it 
but at the same time ennobling it. Thus for the first 
time it becomes possible to explain values like personality, 
and spiritual, — not merely moral, — character. These 
are not mere titles which we accord at our will and 
pleasure to conduct which remains in essence unaltered, 
but they introduce a new kind of life and conduct and 
constitute a starting-point whence we proceed to divide 
all work into two classes, that which has character and 
that which has none. The former alone is life in the 
true sense, since it involves the self-immediacy of life; 
the latter, on the other hand, is a mere catching at life, 
a semblance of life. It is the former only which can 
ask after life's meaning : to the latter such a question has 
no sense. 

As these two kinds of activity are fundamentally 
different in nature, so also their fate in history has been 



DAWN OF A NEW LIFE 95 

very different. The characterless activities depend on 
the conditions of the age and are bound to perish with 
them. Those that have character, on the other hand, as 
being an original source of life, are able to withstand all 
the changes of time and to continue working in all 
ages with a power that is constantly renewing itself. 
It is this which marks off classical ages and classical 
personalities from all others. The spirit of a man like 
Plato keeps its value and power, even if all Plato's 
doctrines should have become strange to us. For in 
the case of a great creative personality of this kind all 
particular work of his is only an expression and a symbol. 
The symbol may, perish, but yet it makes appeal to an 
eternal truth-content of the creative spiritual life. 
This is very specially true in the case of great religious 
teachers. 

Thus in the spiritual life we see revealed a series 
of transcending movements : a transcendence of mere 
juxtaposition in space and time, a transcendence of the 
opposition between subject and object through a full 
creative activity, a transcendence of the gulf between 
activity and being by the formation of a spiritual self 
operative in the action and the development of a spiritual 
character inspiring its whole extent. This series of 
transcending movements did not arise from any merely 
theoretical considerations, but from an actual unfolding 
of new life, a total change of life's condition. For there 
can be no doubt whatsoever that those further develop- 
ments are not mere transpositions inside the world as 
given, but that they oppose to the given world a new 
world of self -activity. In this world all goods and values 
are transmuted. The ruling motive of all effort is no 
longer mere self-preservation in natural and social inter- 



96 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

course, but the quickening into life within our own realm 
of all the fulness of the inner world. Only as life thus 
turns into itself and elaborates a depth can it win a 
content and an independent footing. Here for the first 
time we see a reality that is grounded in itself. Thus 
the new life is not one particular kind of life as contrasted 
with others, but the completion of life in general. The 
only life that is life in the genuine sense is that which 
becomes ensouled through the growth of an independent 
inward world. That this life does not remain a mere 
vague outline is shown both by its development in 
particular directions, e.g. those of the good, the true, and 
the beautiful, and by the formation of well-defined 
departments of life, such as we find in science and art, 
in law and economics, and so on. All these are by no 
means merely special applications of one general 
idea, but rather distinctive developments of an inde- 
pendent inward principle. While carrying on that 
general idea, they are at the same time characteristic 
unfoldings of the spiritual life, primal revelations, 
great experiences of mankind. They do not originate 
with mere finite man, but rather ennoble man's nature, 
show more in it than was suspected, set it in new contexts, 
give it new movements and contents. It is only through 
such a change that the conception of culture acquires a 
clear meaning and a real justification. That culture 
implies setting life in activity as opposed to the fixed 
and given condition of mere nature is implied even in 
the name (colere = to cultivate, to prepare), and is 
quite in accord with general opinion. But now comes 
the question how that activity is to be understood. If 
it is a mere ordering and re-arrangement within a given 
existence, then nothing essentially new will ever come 



DAWN OF A NEW LIFE 97 

out of it. There will be no reward for the endless 
trouble ; the whole thing will end in sheer emptiness. 
It is only if culture allow of a thoroughgoing revolution, 
if the mere activity deepen into self-activity and this 
become strong enough to produce a new world, a new 
life, a new man, — only then has culture any claim to 
man's work, any hold over his spirit; only then can 
it keep the freshness and simplicity of youth in face of 
all the cumber and growing complexity of the ages ; 
only then can it renew itself continually, whereas other- 
wise in the course of the centuries it must become 
ever more tedious and senile. And while this deepened 
activity reveals an overflowing fulness of life and the 
insistent demand for a transformation of all given con- 
tent, it yet continues to focus all diversity upon one 
single task, the turning towards self-immediacy of life 
and a spiritualising of reality. 

Thus the question from which we started has found 
an affirmative answer. Life is really in process of be- 
coming independent within man's sphere. In him we see 
the emergence of a new world which becomes his own life, 
and at the same time gives him an inner stability, a 
superiority to all that is dark and baffling. But as this 
fresh development of life lifts man wholly above this 
original level, — places him indeed in sharp antagonism 
to it, — it can never be merely a product of man himself. 
We are obliged rather to see in it some cosmic movement, 
the emergence of a new stage of life which breaks into 
view in man and demands his co-operation. "A move- 
ment towards wholeness and self-immediacy of life could 
never spring up among us finite and scattered individuals, 
unless reality constituted a whole and drew its life from 
the whole. There must be a spiritual life superior to 



98 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

man, which can, however, disclose itself to him and become 
actually his own being" (" Meaning and Value of Life "). 

This conviction sets the whole of the world and its 
movement in a unique light and therewith also man's 
life and work. The given world, in which the determin- 
ing influence of nature is preponderant, now appears 
merely as a stage of reality, which the onward movement 
leaves behind as it rises to the stage of the spiritual life 
and acquires therewith for the first time a self -immediate 
being. In man, however, the two stages meet. Be- 
longing in the first instance to nature, he can yet rise to 
spirituality and by achieving a new life and being can 
at the same time further the progress of the world. 

As sharer in such a life, and fortified by such inner 
union with the whole of the universe and its fundamental 
principles, man can view the perplexities of the present 
age or of any other without dismay. That perplexities, 
resistance, and hindrance should arise cannot be any 
cause for wonder, since we are full in the middle of the 
movement and have to champion one whole stage of 
reality against another. It is also quite easy to under- 
stand that moments should arise, — critical moments 
for our human destiny, — which require us to fall back 
upon ultimate principles and to redirect our effort. 
Provided, however, that there are such ultimate prin- 
ciples and that their influence extends to us, we have in 
them a stable support and an inexhaustible well-spring of 
life. We are enabled, moreover, to struggle with good 
heart against the distractions and confusions of the pres- 
ent day, its uncertainties and its proneness to negation. 
This struggle after all is not merely our affair, and 
stronger forces are at work in it than those of mere 
finite man. 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 99 

II. Movement towards Religion 

(a) Universal Religion 

Our previous enquiry ended upon an optimistic 
note, and we hope that ultimately we may be able to 
justify this optimism. But at the outset the matter is 
not so simple ; and it is just those considerations which 
promised us support and uplifting that are responsible 
for the further complications. For certain though it 
be that an independent spiritual life makes its appearance 
in man's sphere, it is not thereby settled that this life 
should become his main world, stir the depths of his 
soul, and thence control his striving. It is an old com- 
plaint that the new world which comes to man does not 
find him strong enough to appropriate it, and that, 
instead of becoming central for his life, it only touches 
its fringe. But if it does not obtain his whole devotion, 
then its contents must grow dim and blurred. For if, 
even in the case of outside things, close attention be 
necessary in order to see them fully and clearly, still more 
true is it in the domain of unseen goods and values that 
everything which fails to win the soul's devotion must 
remain obscure and uncertain. In such a condition of 
enfeebled energy and impoverished content, spirituality 
may well seem a mere shadow which attends upon our 
life but cannot influence it; and it becomes quite 
intelligible that the whole thing should be explained 
ever and again as a mere conceit of the imagination. 
But this is unjust. Weak as the spiritual life may be in 
our midst, yet that it is no merely imaginary product is 
sufficiently evidenced by the uniqueness of its content : 
so unique is it that even the boldest fancy which took 



ioo CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

mere nature as a starting-point would never happen 
on it. However wide, then, the gulf which separates man 
from that life, the question of the life's reality is not 
thereby affected. If a constellation be veiled from view, 
it has not therefore set. 

But this state of things certainly involves man in a 
harsh contradiction which it is impossible to tolerate 
permanently. That the new life belongs to him, lifts 
him for the first time above other beings, and for the 
first time gives his life a content, — this he cannot well 
dispute. If, however, at the same time, he has not the 
strength requisite to climb the height from which that 
life opens out to him, the content of life is then at variance 
with his power to appropriate it. The very thing that he 
cannot possibly dispense with remains strange and alien 
to him. A rigid wall of separation seems to separate his 
every-day willing and doing from a deeper nature which 
is divined rather than seen. This new element, even in 
its shadowy condition, is strong enough to disturb the 
ordinary current of our life, but it does not thereby give 
us any new life. We hear a life-stream murmuring, 
but we find no access to it. Thus the new life is ours 
and yet not ours ; it remains strange, and yet we can- 
not put it away from us. 

This dualism in the innermost soul, this division 
between content and power to appropriate it is more 
than all else responsible for the slackness and insincerity, 
— and the discontent, too, — which permeate our ordi- 
nary civilised life and also reach down into the individual 
soul. For that which gave the soul greatness, the 
unfolding of a personality, and the development of a 
spiritual individuality, is now apt to become weakly 
dependent on another type of life. There is a certain 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 101 

will in operation, but it is not strong enough to be 
effective. 

The higher our estimate of the uniqueness and great- 
ness of spirit, the greater distance do we find between 
man and his true self, and the graver must the compli- 
cation seem to be. Its full force must be felt in partic- 
ular where the conviction prevails that genuinely spirit- 
ual life can arise only when activity is accompanied 
by a development of the self, when the activity passes 
into self-activity, so that in lieu of a mere play of 
mechanical forces we have true acquisition of content. 
The dualism in man's nature, however, would seem to 
make this impossible, and, if so, all prospect of genuine 
life would vanish, and all impulse to achieve it would 
collapse. 

As a matter of fact, it has not thus collapsed, and 
spiritual life, — genuine spiritual life, — has proved itself 
even in man's domain to be no mere shade and sem- 
blance. Despite all resistance, genuine culture has 
arisen and maintained itself through the ages. Art and 
science, law and morality have developed kingdoms of 
their own. The individual soul, also, has its share in the 
movement, since the higher element within it separates 
itself from the lower, consolidates its forces, and takes 
up the struggle against its rival. How are we to under- 
stand all this? 

The chasm is much too deep, the antagonism much too 
strong, for any gradual accession of human strength 
to have produced such a result. We cannot understand 
it save on the assumption that spirituality in man derives 
its being and its independent status from the spiritual 
life as a whole. It must be that the universal life itself 
breaks through in us directly, and lifts us by its presence 



102 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

sheer above the weakness of our capacity and the petti- 
ness of our motives. It must set us in the full current 
of that life-stream which else we only hear in the dis- 
tance. It must break down the wall of separation which 
severed us from the depth of our own nature. Thus 
and thus only can the spiritual life become our own affair 
and spring up in us with native energy. Thus alone do 
we become independent foci of life, spiritual forces, 
co-workers in the cosmic process. The spiritual is now 
no longer something half-foreign to us, imposed on us 
from outside, always ruling and demanding. It becomes 
rather our own being and we feel that we stand to it in 
a relation of freedom. It is in this way that to work 
for it becomes a complete end in itself, and fills us directly 
with pure and disinterested joy. But all this is no prod- 
uct of natural evolution; it arises through man being 
uplifted by the power of the whole, in other words, 
through his turning to religion. The presupposition 
of religion is in fact just this, that something higher 
makes its appearance in man and yet is hindered and 
restricted in the condition in which it first finds him. 
Religion is the overcoming of such hindrance and 
restriction. 

This whole movement is not just a development of 
ordinary human capacity ; it can arise only through a 
decisive break with ordinary conditions : it involves a 
rupture, a discontinuity of life. This contrast is of the 
very essence of religion. There can be no religion that 
does not imply opposition to man's primitive condition 
and a re-orientation of life. To this extent religion 
involves revelation and miracle and is unthinkable 
without them. The prevailing confusion of ideas on 
these subjects at the present day gives the conception 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 103 

of an "immanental" religion almost a magical fascina- 
tion for a great many people. They think that by means 
of it they can keep what is valuable in religion and yet 
escape its perplexities, and they do not see that their 
expedient destroys precisely that which is essential and 
valuable in religion, namely, its power to free man from 
the entanglements of the world as given, and to rescue 
the spirituality which else is oppressed and fettered by 
its bondage to that which is human in the petty, narrow 
sense of the term. Such deceptive substitutes as that 
of an immanental religion gain consequence and standing 
from a certain unsatisfactory presentation of the work- 
ing of religion which is commonly put forward by those 
who stand outside it. They are of opinion that to make 
religion depend upon divine power is to condemn man 
to insignificance and rob him of all freedom. As a 
matter of fact, it is just the opposite contention which is 
true. There is no greatness and no freedom apart from 
such recourse to the divine. For, apart from it, the 
spiritual life is always in bondage to the sorry muddle of 
human mediocrity, and there can be no development of 
any inward greatness. To achieve such greatness we 
must break loose from mediocrity and live and work 
in the power of a transcendent whole. For only so can 
man draw on the fulness of infinite life, be firmly rooted 
within himself, and, by bringing isolated characteristics 
together, develop a spiritual character which permeates 
the whole range of his activity. As for freedom, the 
kernel of all religion is its power to make man free and 
independent, and summon him to a voluntary co-opera- 
tion in the great work of the spirit. To use religious 
phraseology: freedom is the highest manifestation of 
grace. That creative life should be shared certainly 



io 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

involves a mystery, but this inexplicable mystery is 
at the same time an obvious fact. All our courage and 
strength to face life's tasks are rooted in it. It makes 
our life for the first time truly our own, gives it the 
steady hope of a new beginning and a fadeless youth, 
enables it to view the world with other eyes and to gain 
an understanding of Meister Eckhart's saying, that we 
should seek God not "in evening- vision but in morn- 
ing-light." Thus it is no anxious and oppressed spirit 
that speaks to us from the bosom of religion, but a 
spirit, rather, of assurance and joy, able to see clearly 
the unsatisfactoriness of the world, but thereby acquir- 
ing for the first time the consciousness of its own superior- 
ity. This assurance and joyousness are most intimately 
bound up with reverence and gratitude. Though man is 
conscious of his greatness, it is not a greatness which his 
vanity can put before him as his own, but rather one to 
which the saying applies : " What have we that we have 
not received?" 

Viewed in this light, all genuine spiritual culture 
involves religion, the consciousness of being sustained 
and impelled, led and guided by superhuman power; 
spiritual culture in all its ramifications stands witness 
to the truth of religion. This consciousness of being 
sustained and guided by superhuman power has always 
been most intense when spiritual creation has been on a 
high level, since these were the times that showed 
greatest discrepancy between human capacity and 
spiritual achievement. Thus creative geniuses in every 
field, even when they have come into sharp conflict with 
the traditional religion, have felt as though they were 
led and guarded by an unseen Power. Their creative 
work has been the expression of an inner necessity which 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 105 

not only triumphed victorious over morbid doubt and 
brooding, but gave them also the fixed consciousness of 
superiority to all their external environment. 

This consciousness, in which dependence and inde- 
pendence are inextricably blended, takes, however, a 
different form in each of life's different departments. 
The great artist feels it differently from the great thinker. 
He will be more directly conscious of his creative power 
as being a gift and something that lifts him above him- 
self. But is it not equally true that the great thinkers 
also could not with gladness and confidence have opposed 
the indwelling necessity within them to all the claims of 
environment and tradition, had they not been inspired 
by the conviction that this necessity had a deeper root 
than the idiosyncrasy of their own nature ? Nor should 
it be a mere baseless accident that hardly one great 
thinker, one of those whose systems have embraced 
the whole of reality, has ever found a final and satisfac- 
tory solution in atheism. Where activity has been more 
outwardly directed, as in the case of statesmen and 
warriors, the superior power which has excited the feeling 
of dependency has been viewed rather as a fate which 
protects and upholds man so long as it can use him, but 
lets him fall so soon as his work is done. But here too 
the conviction still rules that man's conduct and success 
do not depend entirely upon himself. In proportion, 
however, as life turns inward and seeks furtherance from 
within, religion also will develop more and more along 
spiritual and ethical lines. 

But the working of the superior power is not confined 
to the leaders among men. It penetrates every part of 
life, and is mighty both in individuals and in the building- 
up of culture as a whole. It manifests itself in a move- 



106 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

merit for life's progress and re-fashioning, in a trans- 
formation of that which at first seemed purely external 
into an inner power, in an elevation of man above his 
own motives, in an eliciting of new connexions and an 
emancipation from petty selfdom. The Copernican 
revolution which Kant's genius effected in the domain of 
knowledge is really going on throughout the whole 
course of the world's history. If life's outlook was at 
first external and it exhausted all its energies in outside 
achievement, yet gradually it works out a more inward 
character and shifts its centre of gravity from without 
to within. Instead of viewing and treating the inner 
from the standpoint of the outer, it shows an increasing 
tendency to treat the outer from an inner point of view. 
That this is no mere transposition, but a far-reaching 
revolution, is shown very clearly by the teaching of 
history. 

It is shown both in man's relation to things and in his 
relation to his fellow-men. Things and persons alike win 
a new meaning as life unfolds. We busy ourselves with 
objects and work at them in the first instance for our own 
advantage. We cannot do otherwise, since the con- 
tinuous requirements of our physical self-preservation 
force us to treat things in this utilitarian way. But the 
work which was at first merely a means becomes, in the 
course of life's development, an end in itself. We desire 
the success of the cause ; we are able to subordinate our 
own comfort willingly to its requirements. And this is 
the more true in proportion as work is no longer limited 
to single productions but concentrates into a whole, 
becomes a life-calling and as such assumes a permanent 
character. It then becomes an inner support to man 
and keeps him from the smallness which else would 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 107 

characterise him. Thus life climbs by means of 
work. 

What is true for the individual is true also for humanity 
as a whole. Here we are dealing with the upbuilding 
of civilisation. Man plays his part in it at the outset 
merely from motives of profit and enjoyment. He 
observes phenomena and seeks the rules that direct their 
course, in order to defy hostile powers in the struggle for 
existence and to rind his way through the mysterious 
world. But knowledge and research are ever drawing 
him on, disentangling themselves from mere profit and 
finally breaking loose from it entirely. Through such 
a severance, and in no other way, science first becomes 
possible, and science not only develops its own necessities 
but also enlists man's powers in their behalf. It becomes 
an uplifting force which causes all selfish aims to be for- 
gotten in the search after truth. Similarly also in the 
case of art and the other departments of life. In one and 
all there is the separation going on between a genuine 
spiritual culture and a merely humanistic culture, which 
may be defined as an adaptation of cultural work to 
suit the aims and interests of mere finite man. This 
lower culture by no means disappears with the advent 
of the higher, and, to all appearance, the two streams may 
often run together, but there is in truth a wide distance 
between them ; indeed they are quite opposite in ten- 
dency. The humanistic culture is always drawing its 
nourishment from the spiritual culture. Without this, 
it could not subsist at all, and the medley of individual 
efforts would not unify even into the semblance of a 
culture. 

In the relationship of man to man the inward elevation 
of life shows up still more clearly. The bonds that unite 



108 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

men in love and friendship are at the outset somewhat 
external and transient. But in proportion as those 
relations become firmly established and develop a com- 
munity of life, the more does one man become dear and 
valuable to another for his own sake, the more does 
society become a great good in itself, the more spiritual 
is its content, the more opposed its influence to selfish 
narrowness. This educative and ennobling power of 
life reaches also to the wider spheres of social inter- 
course. The motive which impels men to form larger 
communities is at first not much more than need and 
self-interest, but the development of states and na- 
tions soon leaves such narrow boundaries far behind. 
Common work, common experience, common successes, 
common needs weld also men's souls together, and 
give rise to an inner community, which is a strong 
counteracting agency to the exclusive pursuit of private 
interests and impels man to unselfish toil and even 
joyful sacrifice. The common feeling which thus arises, 
the flame of pure patriotism, rides roughshod over all 
merely individual interests put together. And finally 
this tendency to spiritualise and ennoble human relations 
extends to the whole of humanity. The fact that we 
live on the same planet and are dependent on each other 
through the division of labour is not nearly sufficient 
to unite us inwardly and instil into us genuine sympathy 
and love for one another. To this end, we repeat, 
man must be lifted up ; there must be an inrush of new 
power. Only a life which includes us all root and branch 
and melts down all rigid distinctions can produce gen- 
uine humanity, kindness, sympathy, and love, not as 
passing emotions of a merely subjective mood, — 
which count for very little in bringing about the great 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 109 

end, — but as mighty currents flowing from within 
outwards, making every man feel with his fellow, sorrow 
and rejoice with him, assimilate his life directly to his 
own. The destiny of each individual life is now lived 
through in the light of the destiny of the whole : it is 
that which illumines and ennobles it. That such con- 
ditions give rise to great historical movements is shown by 
the world-religions, whether, like Buddhism, they lay 
the main stress on sympathy, or, like Christianity, on 
love. 

All this implies a transcendence and reversal of man's 
original state. That a new and opposing element is 
really introduced is evidenced also by the fact that, 
even after the uplifting process has begun, the lower 
element still persists, occupies life to a very large extent, 
and does all that it can by its pettiness and sluggishness 
to resist the ascending movement. Thus the higher 
principle has always had to fight hard. But it is just 
in so doing that it displays its independence and 
spontaneity and shows that it has sprung from deeper 
sources. 

There is still another direction in which we see the 
working of a supra-human life at once immanent in 
human nature and yet transcending it. We refer to the 
movement towards spirituality which we find running 
through history, not filling every page of it, but forming, 
as it were, a standard which confronts and opposes its 
average level. History is no mere permutation and com- 
bination of given elements, but it brings about an inner 
transformation of life ; new depths emerge ; the inward- 
ness and spontaneity of life are vastly increased. Taken 
as a whole, history is the elaboration of a realm of inward- 
ness. For how came it to pass that men did not simply 



no CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

rest content with that which they possessed? What 
force was it that drove them to seek new things and to 
pursue them in the teeth of resistance and often at the 
cost of sternest toil and conflict? Surely it was some 
inward impulse that drove life forward, some over- 
mastering desire for more content and self-immediacy of 
life. But such an impulse could not originate in man 
alone, but must come from some life working in him, 
seeking its own depth and therewith fulfilling itself. 
In every department we can trace the process by which 
the spiritual life is continually growing more indepen- 
dent, refusing to be controlled from without, supplying 
in an ever greater degree its own content. The morality, 
for example, which proved entirely satisfactory to the 
golden age of antiquity, is insufficient for its closing days 
and most emphatically so for the newly dawning Chris- 
tian religion. Thus a man like Augustine could charac- 
terise the virtues of antiquity with the harsh phrase, 
" splendid vices" (virtutes veterum splendida vitia). 
Expressed in this drastic form the judgment was cer- 
tainly unfair, but it had just so much basis, that the 
ideal of ancient ethics was rather the unfolding and 
ennoblement of a nature already given than the implant- 
ing of a new life opposed to nature. Similarly with the 
striving after knowledge. Thought and sense were much 
more intimately allied in the ancient world, and even 
spiritual values did not wholly exclude all sensory ele- 
ments. In this respect medievalism agreed with an- 
tiquity. It is our modern world which for the first time 
discriminates more sharply between the two and gives 
the spiritual element a completely independent status, 
whence it may re-fashion the world of sense. Here, as 
in the case of conduct, the growing independence of 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION in 

spirituality by no means extinguishes the sensory 
element altogether, but it alters its status and its value, 
and makes the whole of life more mobile and self-active. 
Everywhere the progress of the movement reveals 
inadequacies in that which hitherto seemed completely 
satisfactory. It would appear as though the spiritual 
life were pushing forward in advance of that which at 
first seemed to be its whole content. 

Nor is the ascending movement confined to special 
branches of life ; it applies also to life as a whole. For we 
fight also for this whole, and here, too, there is an unrest- 
ing movement, pressing on from stage to stage in com- 
plete indifference to the opinions and wishes of individual 
men. Starting from mere sporadic manifestation the 
spiritual movement struggles to reach a stable synthesis 
and at the same time to acquire a definite character 
impressing its own distinctive mark on everything 
individual. The first synthesis of this kind in our western 
culture was that effected in the great days of classical 
antiquity. But its artistic shaping of reality gives no 
permanent satisfaction to the spiritual life, since it is 
always arousing fresh questions, and making fresh con- 
tributions and fresh demands. The new material thus 
introduced loosens the old connexions, and an entire 
disruption is threatened, till at last, in Christianity, a 
new synthesis is formed. But, as we have seen, this 
also has to meet the shock of resistance, and, amid 
much stress of upheaval and doubt, it finds itself con- 
fronted by the modern life-system resting on a scientific 
basis. But since this, in turn, despite the way in which 
it widens man's experience of the outside world, proves 
inwardly too small and narrow, we find ourselves again 
to-day in a state of dissolution, though at the same 



ii2 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

time seeking for a new basis of union. It would seem, 
then, that we have alternately creative and critical 
periods, synthetic epochs followed by analytic. But 
all in last resort are parts of one single continuous move- 
ment. Even that which at first seems purely negative, 
and poses as such, contributes in the end to an affirmative, 
inasmuch as it furthers the advance of the whole and 
paves the way for new syntheses. The creative periods, 
moreover, also show a certain rhythm. The movement 
of the spiritual life is at first directed more towards 
the world; then from this it turns back upon itself. 
Thus the creative genius of the Greeks embraced and 
moulded the whole extent of the cosmos, whereas the 
early Christians anchored the spiritual life within itself, 
and deepened it from within. The modern period again 
has felt a renewed and stronger impulse to work with 
restless zeal in the outside world ; whereas, at the present 
moment, we are again conscious of an intense desire for 
more self -concentration of the spiritual life. From the 
human point of view, these fluctuations may create an 
impression of great insecurity ; but, as a matter of fact, 
the phases of expansion and of concentration, like those 
of affirmation and negation, are part of one single mighty 
movement in which the spiritual life, as manifested in 
man, is both seeking itself and finding expression in work. 
But whence should come the impulse and the strength 
for all this save from the spiritual life itself? The 
upheavals and revolutions which the movement involves 
are anything but comfortable and agreeable to man. 
They often ride roughshod over his welfare ; they plunge 
him into indescribable depths of doubt and sorrow and 
need ; they arouse discord, hate, and strife ; they never 
leave his life in peace. But it is they, notwithstanding, 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 113 

which make man great and give content to his life. Take 
them away, and then see how poverty-stricken and 
meaningless that life becomes. What is it, then, which 
drives him into the struggle and forces him to seek his 
greatness in ways so directly opposed to his comfort? 
It is nothing but the kindling of independent spirituality 
even within his own sphere ; it is a higher power which at 
the same time constitutes the very essence of his own 
nature. Here as before there is a glaring opposition 
between the life of ascent and the average mode of life ; 
since in the first place the former demands a movement 
from whole to whole, whereas the latter is a coursing to 
and fro between individual elements, and in the second 
place the former develops a totally different scheme 
of goods and values from the latter. Thus side by side 
with that movement which embraces and unifies the 
world's history, there is a constantly fluctuating ebb 
and flow from moment to moment, from generation to 
generation. Viewed from the standpoint of this latter 
movement, the whole appears as nothing but confusion 
and chaos. 

Thus the conclusion remains that throughout the whole 
of human life there is an unfolding of independent and 
genuine spirituality, which owes its origin to no merely 
human capacity, but arises only when this capacity is 
heightened through the presence of divine power, — 
and again does not permeate things through and through, 
but rather opposes and works against them. We may 
therefore assert that nowhere in man's sphere is there 
any genuine spiritual life without some element of reli- 
gion, though, so far as man's consciousness is concerned, 
the religion is often unsuspected. This kind of religion 
may therefore be termed universal. 



ii 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

(b) Characteristic Religion 

But this universal religion with its proclamation of 
the exaltation of man to be a free upholder of spiritual 
life does not lead us at once to a final conclusion. It 
brings us no nearer to that which for the historic religions 
was the matter of supreme importance. It does not 
even enable us to understand how in general religion 
could so concentrate itself as to form a separate depart- 
ment over against the rest of life and could embody 
itself in a historic form. The main concern of the 
historic religions was not the kindling of spirituality, 
but the saving of the human soul and the whole human 
life from intolerable contradiction, the emancipation 
from sin and sorrow, the upholding of the spiritual life 
against the destruction which threatens it on every 
hand. In pursuit of this aim these religions were 
obliged to sever themselves from the rest of life and to 
found a new order of fellowship. Now does the previous 
course of our enquiry make it possible for us to under- 
stand such a development, — to understand both the 
dawn of a desire for help and salvation, and the disclosure 
of a means whereby such desire may be satisfied ? We 
believe we can answer both questions with a confident 
affirmative. 

It is, in the first place, an illuminating fact that the 
discovery of an independent spiritual fife within man's 
sphere makes the aspect of the world and the condition 
of man's life not a simpler, but rather a more complicated 
thing. For this development implies demands upon 
reality which experience does not bear out, nay, even 
contradicts outright. If the spiritual life be the heart 
and motive-power of all reality, and a primal source of 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 115 

life to man, then we should expect that even amid 
inferior surroundings it would yet keep its own height 
assured and would follow its own path unperturbed by 
all alien influence. We should expect also that man, 
in virtue of his new dignity, would occupy an unassail- 
able position over against all that was below the spiritual 
level. Any opposition actually experienced could be 
attributed to the laggardliness of mediocrity and its 
refusal to comply with the demands of the spiritual life. 
It could never hinder this life in its own creative function, 
keep it from its goals, divide it against itself. 

Any unprejudiced observation of experience, however, 
shows that the hindrance is effective enough not only to 
limit the spiritual life from the outside, but also to 
penetrate within and threaten to shatter it. It seems as 
though it were unable to maintain its independence and 
must succumb to foreign powers. We find in the first 
place that our natural environment is not merely indif- 
ferent to the aims of the spiritual life. Not only does it 
build up and cast down with an apparently complete 
unconcern for the effect upon that life, but it actually 
seems to dominate it completely and measure it by its 
own standards. Bodily endowment determines, to all 
appearance, the level of spirituality, and the fact of 
heredity makes man a mere link in a mysterious chain 
of natural causation. Even in his action and endeavour 
he appears as a slave of the nature he was so proud of 
transcending. Sensuality, under the influence of civili- 
sation, outgrows its simple natural state and passes into 
a voluptuous refinement, in which perverted form it 
drags all spiritual endeavour down to its own level. 
Human society is not merely dull and indifferent to the 
aims of the spiritual life, but it gains possession of the 



n6 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

spiritual powers and forces them to subserve its own 
interest ; while, in the case of the individual, the growth 
of spirituality heightens the natural desire for self- 
preservation into a boundless egoism, which treats all the 
fulness and variety of the world as a mere means and 
instrument of personal well-being. But the fact that 
spiritual life can be thus impaired betrays in last resort 
its inner weakness within our human sphere. The life- 
unity shows itself not strong enough to hold the separate 
forces firmly together and adjust their respective claims, 
with the result that they break loose from their founda- 
tion, strike out paths of their own and thus fall inevitably 
into sharp contradiction with each other and also with 
the aims of the whole, so that total dissolution bids fair 
to be the final issue. Departmental systems of culture 
confront each other, drag the whole man in one particular 
direction, develop certain powers at the cost of letting 
others become atrophied, and are liable to prove dan- 
gerous to the integrity and inwardness of the soul. 
Thus science may give birth to intellectual coldness, 
pride, and narrow-heartedness ; art may become a source 
of vanity and effeminacy. As spiritual movements 
among men thus turn against spirit itself, it may well 
seem that spirit contradicts itself and is counteracting 
its own efforts, — a state of affairs which brings to mind 
the remarkable mediaeval saying: "No one is against 
God but God Himself" {nemo contra deum nisi deus 
ipse). The perverseness indeed amounts even to a 
pleasure in denying, opposing, and destroying good ; it 
becomes a diabolical joy in inflicting harm. Enigmatic 
though such abysses of human nature may be, it is only a 
shallow rationalism which can overlook them. We do not 
free ourselves from darkness by closing our eyes to it. 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 117 

But if we cannot explain this discord and, in particular, 
the problem of evil, then all the trouble that theologians 
and philosophers have bestowed on it is sadly wasted. 
And still less can optimism explain it away. If this 
seems to have any success, it is only because it assumes 
that our relationship to the world is purely that of 
spectators. From the onlooker's point of view, things 
may easily be arranged and adjusted so as to secure a 
fair degree of harmony. But our actual relationship 
to the world as well as to ourselves is not that of mere 
spectators. We feel and live through the events that 
take place in it, so that the pacifying attempts of opti- 
mism bring us but scant satisfaction. 

But even if the contradiction must remain in all its 
acuteness, it in no way destroys the fundamental fact 
of an appearance of the spiritual life in our midst; it 
rather posits it as an assumption. The harm and per- 
version would be impossible, if there were nothing to 
harm and to pervert. Without good, evil is unthinkable. 
The very risks we run may make us conscious of some- 
thing deeper than we before suspected. Guilt may 
strengthen our certainty of the government of a moral 
order ; doubt may make us more convinced of the exist- 
ence of a truth. But this reflexion still leaves us our 
contradiction, and with it the danger that our life and 
effort may come to a complete standstill. What does 
the appearance of a new life avail us if it cannot make 
its promise good ? Must it not be merely an oppressive 
burden if it propose to us tasks which under given condi- 
tions we are totally unable to discharge ? 

The only hope of retaining energy and confidence is 
that there should be a possibility of rising above the con- 
tradictory state we have described, that there should be 



n8 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

a further revelation of the spiritual world transcending 
all contradiction. And it is precisely this possibility 
which religion maintains, all religion, that is, which is 
a religion of the spirit and not of authority. For its 
contention is this: that through the opening-up of an 
immediate relationship of the soul and of man to a God- 
head which is not merely immanent in the world but also 
transcendent, a new spiritual life wells up which cannot 
be thus imperilled and distorted, since now all human 
activity has the support and sustenance of the divine. 
In their more detailed account of this relationship the 
various religions part company; but wheresoever they 
become religions of redemption, there is never any 
doubt that the depth here awakened is not present in the 
soul from the beginning, — its connexion with God 
being only an after-development, — but that it springs out 
of this relationship in the first instance and must be con- 
tinually dependent on it. It does not exist in its own 
right, but only as it refers to and is directed towards that 
being on which it rests. We have here not just the 
heightened form of something old, but the creation of 
something new. 

The proof of this extension, — this origination of a 
new life, — can be supplied only by the actual develop- 
ment of this life : in the individual we have the emergence 
of a soul-experience which transcends all mere work, 
even the highest ; and in mankind as a whole we have the 
birth of a spiritual freedom independent of all culture, 
even though it be spiritual in kind. As we Germans 
say with justice that man is more than his work, so we 
might also say that human life is more than a mere 
edifice of culture. For what is to become of this culture 
if it make man its mere servant and tool, and pose as an 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 119 

ultimate end in itself, detached from a personal freedom 
which lives through it and makes it its own? Will it 
not, as the result of such detachment, become a destruc- 
tive power, which sucks the very soul out of man and 
then flings him carelessly aside ? And does not all its 
noisy work end in nothing but hollow futility, unless at 
some point it become a matter of personal experience ? 
But it cannot become a personal experience, any more 
than work could in the case of the individual, unless it 
rest upon a life which transcends its own. And whence 
should this life proceed save from direct communion with 
the transcendent source of all reality ? 

The case clearly stands as follows : The spiritual life in 
its totality involves a task which it is bound to persevere 
in despite all obstacles. But it cannot meet these 
obstacles unless it is in some way lifted above them, 
unless it has some sure ground from which to confront 
them. Now it is not lifted above them at every point of 
life's domain, but only along one special direction, only 
where a new depth is being formed over against the sphere 
of work. This means that there is a gradation within 
the spiritual life itself, a distinction between work and 
the experience of the soul, — a distinction which in no 
way lessens the value of work, but at the same time 
precludes our viewing work as final. The soul-experience 
also has its own task and form of activity. For, however 
true it be that human life here depends on the divine, 
yet it is not absorbed by it nor even degraded to the 
level of a mere passive receptacle, but the marvel which 
is characteristic of all genuine spiritual life is manifested 
here in a heightened degree: to wit, the generation of 
independence from the working of a creative power. In 
the depths of man's soul there is the capacity to incline 



120 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

towards an action or resist it, to affirm something or 
revolt from it. The divine never becomes fully man's 
save through his own decision and appropriative activity. 
But since in this choice it is not one particular part of the 
soul that is involved, but the soul as a totality, this task 
is supreme over all others, and, in the case of any col- 
lision of interests takes unconditionally the first place. 
Since, moreover, the relation thus developed between man 
and the world-transcending spirituality belongs wholly 
to the sphere of the spiritual life, it allows of the unfold- 
ing of a purely inward experience in which the soul 
communes with the totality of the spiritual life, as an 
I with a Thou. This inward experience will thus be 
more warm and intimate than any spiritual work can be. 
It will acquire, so to speak, a more personal character, 
if only we bear clearly in mind that the concept of per- 
sonality is here only a sign and symbol for something 
that transcends alike words and concepts. That man 
here attains the utmost depth of inwardness may be 
further attested by the fact that at all times religion 
has contributed more than any other factor towards 
bringing about mutual understanding and spiritual 
intercourse among men. Religion, in the sense in which 
we are here regarding it, has been more effective than 
anything else both in combining men and in sundering 
them. Thus too we can explain the fact that those 
spheres of life which require a community of feeling and 
convictions, — as is notably the case with Art, — cannot 
prosper apart from religion. 

As all religion in the characteristic sense springs from 
the desire to be freed from sorrow and sin, it must effect a 
conquest of these and, in so doing, must convert life into 
a great onward movement. This movement seeks to 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 121 

press beyond sorrow, but can still allow a value to sorrow 
in so far as it rouses life from inertia and sloth, awakens 
longing in the soul, and thus paves the way for the up- 
lifting into a new life. And if it be true that all unfold- 
ing of genuine spirituality rescues our life from the merely 
natural process and transforms it into personal deed, then 
the activistic tendency must become more marked 
when, through the stress of emotional upheaval, an ascent 
of man's nature is effected and a new life is laid hold 
upon. The more vigorously this movement develops, 
and the process of decision which it implies, the more 
certainly does life acquire a history of its own ; the more 
possible does it become to speak of a history of the soul. 
Not only have the great religions viewed the universe for 
the most part from a historical standpoint, but religious 
movements have themselves become the soul of human 
history. They oppose with all their might the attempt to 
change reality into a mechanical process of nature. 
Freedom, — freedom at the root of life, — has no better 
ally than religion. 

We cannot possibly assert that this new orientation 
makes life easier and more agreeable. For it lays the 
whole weight of the world's problem on the soul of man ; 
it heightens the susceptibility to pain, since it makes a 
man live into the sorrow of others as though it were his 
own ; it makes sin more serious, branding it as contra- 
diction to a good and holy will, and it makes many things 
unsatisfactory which hitherto passed muster fairly well, 
— current morality, for instance. But the raising of the 
standard which is inherent in all this is at the same time 
a raising of life ; and if there is much in religious move- 
ments which remains incomplete and obscure, yet, 
despite incompleteness and obscurity, there can be no 



122 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

manner of doubt that in man, individually and collec- 
tively, there is something going on which lies beyond the 
range of caprice and doubt, that our life develops within 
great spiritual contexts and is in no way futile. 

And this brings us to the point which does more than 
anything else to establish the power of religion over 
man. It is that religion, and religion alone, can satisfy 
completely his desire for spiritual self-preservation, the 
desire that his experiences and acts should have some 
unconditional and unlimited value. Let us take first 
the case of the individual. Nature treats him with 
complete indifference, as a mere point of transition. 
Fate uses him and then flings him aside. His human 
environment allows him, indeed, a certain value, but as 
a rule this is measured out grudgingly and passes into 
swift oblivion. How often is it brought home to us that 
no one is irreplaceable, and how urgently does all experi- 
ence of life impress upon us the duty of resignation ! 
And yet there is something in us which rebels against this 
conclusion as nerveless and senile, nay, rejects it even as 
spelling inward destruction. For the life-pressure which 
is here at work is not the mere natural impulse of self- 
preservation ; still less is it a clinging to the petty self 
which through all chance and change would seek only to 
preserve its own comfort. The problem here is the 
maintenance and development of the spiritual life at 
this particular spot, the question whether we, — called 
upon to co-operate in the building-up of the universe, — 
are willing and able for the task. Here there is some- 
thing going forward in man which actually asserts itself 
against him and holds him fast even against his will, 
though in the long run it is destined to capture his will 
also and dominate his striving. Here we are concerned 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 123 

with the maintenance of something which does not 
affect merely ourselves, which, therefore, we dare not 
abandon because to do so would be to yield up a good 
entrusted to us and to desert our duty. The life-impulse 
herein operative might be called metaphysical, in opposi- 
tion to the physical. When it ceases to act, then all 
that we do, all that we make out of ourselves, must be a 
matter of indifference. Its extinction would mean that 
we should be unable to keep our self-respect ; we should 
have nothing to lean on, nothing by which to lift our- 
selves. Our life would be sham and deception and all 
our undertakings would be meaningless. But how 
comes it that we should always be seeking something 
beyond, seeking it with untiring passion, if that higher 
life-impulse were not already at work in us? Here, if 
anywhere, the seeking in itself proves to be already a 
possession, and Pascal's words are justified: "Thou 
wouldst not seek me, hadst thou not already found me." 

It is, however, religion only, with its disclosure of a 
new life-depth and its offer of a sure foundation which 
can alike justify and satisfy this life-impulse. Thus the 
irresistible desire for self-preservation, for the main- 
tenance of the spiritual life here and now, turns neces- 
sarily to religion. This was what Augustine meant by the 
words : "If I seek thee, my God, then I seek the blessed 
life ; I will seek thee, that so my soul may live." 

The problem affects in the first instance the individual 
soul, but it concerns also the whole of the human race. 
For here also the question arises whether all our trouble 
and work exhausts itself in pursuing the routine require- 
ments of civilisation and thus passes aimlessly away, 
or whether, over against this routine, a spiritual self is 
acquired and with it a sense of the infinite in work. 



i2 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

This problem of spiritual self-preservation is the deci- 
sive consideration through which pre-eminently religion 
has attracted mankind in the past and is always renewing 
her hold. For here we are concerned with the primal 
source of life, with the fundamental axiom the affirma- 
tion or denial of which determines whether the spiritual 
life in man shall stand or fall. Affirmation means that 
everything is inverted and that we take up our position 
in a world which transcends alike nature and civilisation. 
This will always give offence in certain quarters and 
arouse contradiction. But so far as the opposition is 
successful, life falls a prey to disruption and must finally 
break up altogether. Man cannot for ever comply 
tamely with such a result, and thus the need for a spiritual 
self-preservation leads him back ever and again to religion. 
Denial itself must in the end become a road to affirma- 
tion, though often indeed with a very radical alteration 
in the original contention. In conclusion we may say 
that the apparently most venturesome hypothesis is here 
really the most certain, that on which the certainty of 
everything else depends. 

Just as religion only found a secure settlement by 
boldly rising above what had hitherto seemed to be the 
whole reality, so also the distinctively religious life can 
develop only in independence of that lower reality 
and even in opposition to it. It therefore views life as a 
whole from its own peculiar standpoint. It is true that 
religion does not only rise above the world, but also 
returns to it and seeks to bring under its own rule the 
life there represented. But it soon becomes obvious 
that despite the inner transcendence resistance still 
remains, — remains and becomes still stronger as time 
goes on. Thus the struggle is permanent and there is no 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 125 

prospect of its ever issuing in a clear victory on this 
human plane of ours. Life must seek its reward not so 
much in any definite conclusion to its work as in the fact 
that it is pressing forward through struggle and experi- 
ence to new depths within itself, that it is making some- 
thing more of itself, putting more energy and resolution 
into its fight with the hostile element. The progress of 
history, therefore, will never culminate in a millennium on 
this human plane of ours, but the content and the force 
of spirituality among men will be continually augmented 
and life lifted thereby to a higher level. But this con- 
viction that the world is permanently incomplete and 
man's life permanently a struggle necessarily drives 
religion to look beyond the whole of this natural order 
and seek a meaning for the world not so much in itself 
as in its connexions. Thus life becomes a link in a more 
extended chain which we are unable to pursue further, 
— an act in a supra-historical drama whose course is 
hidden from human eyes. The religious imagination will 
throw off various pictures of what those further paths of 
life may be, but for life these are of secondary importance. 
Life is primarily concerned with the fact that religion 
may have the consciousness as it develops of being su- 
perior to the world around it, of carrying its supreme 
experiences within itself, — the consciousness of not 
being bound down to the standards of its environment, 
but of being able to measure the environment by its 
own standard. This is indispensable for religion if it is 
to rest secure within itself and develop a distinctive 
character of its own. It does not, therefore, change life 
into a hoping and waiting for a Beyond, but sets it in an 
independent spiritual order transcending alike the world 
and time, and regards this as the ultimate depth of 



126 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

reality. The movement here is not from near to far, but 
from surface to depth ; it is a seeking of itself. It is not 
a case of something new being added as an afterthought 
to a world already securely and firmly established. 
There is rather a complete reversal of valuation : what 
seemed at first sight to be secure is shown in the course 
of life's further development to be floating in uncer- 
tainty and urgently in need of a supporting groundwork. 
And it is just this which religion promises to give it. 

But necessary as all this is, there can be no doubt that 
this new path takes us to the very limit of human capacity 
and human comprehension, not only as regards concepts, 
but also as regards feelings and the general tone of life. 
There is a danger here of slipping into vague indefinite- 
ness, losing our connexions as we climb further and 
ever further, and finally becoming confused about every- 
thing. The religious movement in particular may be 
nothing more than a transient flash confined to the mere 
individual, an exuberant upwelling of the moment 
leaving no deeper trace behind it and hardly touching 
the real core of a man's nature. The necessity of meeting 
such dangers acts as a powerful incentive to the formation 
of a religious social circle which can seize upon the life as 
it wells up from its hidden depth and make it accessible 
to everybody, wrap men about in a distinctively spiritual 
atmosphere and oppose something firm and substantial 
to the haphazard fleeting quality of individual condition 
and caprice. The movement towards the formation of 
the religious community, — the Church, in fact, — is 
absolutely indispensable if religious impulse and emotion 
are to be translated into quiet fruitful work. This 
social bias, however, implies at the same time a historical 
bias. For men are never brought together by general 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 127 

principles and ideas but only by historical events and 
experiences. Thus the religious life will receive tangible 
embodiment and individualised form, but at the same 
time it will be confronted with new tasks and new 
dangers. The visible embodiment may damage and 
dispossess the soul ; the individualised form may con- 
tradict the fundamental content of the spiritual life. 
The individual may be stifled by his environment and 
the living moment by dependence on the past. These 
complications which we of to-day feel with especial 
keenness will have to receive our attention later. But 
however weighty they may be and however serious the 
reflexions to which they give rise, they cannot make us 
question the need for the formation of a religious com- 
munity. Apart from it, a characteristic religion cannot 
possibly be maintained. We cannot consider a church 
as superfluous without either allowing religion to become 
thin and ineffective or else placing an overweening value 
on the spiritual capacity and truthfulness of individuals. 
If progressive minds to-day feel the Church to be mainly 
a weight and a hindrance, the fault lies not in the nature 
of the Church in general, but in the fact that the churches 
of the present day do not meet the needs of our present 
stage of development, that they are inwardly old and 
outworn. But this should urge us to a renewal of the 
churches, not to a rejection of them. If a thing be 
necessary in itself, then defects which may mar it for the 
moment cannot enable us to dispense with it altogether. 

(c) Retrospect and Summary 

Our view of religion did not confine itself to one plane. 
After securing a starting-point in the spiritual life, we 
passed through two stages even within the borders of 



128 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

religion, — that of universal and that of characteristic 
religion. We saw that it was in this latter stage that 
religion first became independent and developed a 
thought-world of its own, and at the same time began 
to create a life-sphere of its own, whereas before it had 
only served to establish and deepen the spiritual life in 
general. But though there is necessarily a disposition 
to press beyond the universal religion, yet this latter 
may never become a mere transitional point, but must 
rather remain a permanent constituent of the religious 
life. Characteristic religion, shut up within itself, is apt to 
lose touch with life as a whole ; in so doing, it not only 
becomes narrow and exclusive, but actually rejoices in 
such narrowness as separating it from the " wicked" 
world. This is the road to inward deadness and spirit- 
ual pride, to pietism and pharisaism. But such contrac- 
tion carries its own penalty within itself. Religion not 
only ceases to have any strong influence on life, but 
through such separation it is apt to become to far too 
great an extent a mere froth and shimmer of subjective 
feeling, defenceless against the all- too-ready doubt which 
declares the whole thing to be a mere cobweb of man's 
brain. Thus in the course of further development, the 
original connexion should not be lost, and religion, in 
order to be strong and healthy, must always remain 
within a wider whole of life. Characteristic religion 
must work back into every branch of life through uni- 
versal religion. Both types of religion must be con- 
stantly interacting in order that the life of religion may 
sustain a movement within itself and not develop charac- 
ter at the expense of breadth and breadth at the expense 
of character. 
This ascent of the spiritual life generally to universal 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 129 

religion, and from universal to characteristic religion, 
must not be understood as implying that each individual 
has to go through this movement in his own experience 
in order to participate in religion and be assured of its 
truth. Not only would this make religion the concern 
of a small company, an aristocracy of intellect, — 
whereas it is precisely religion which addresses itself to 
all men and the whole of mankind, — but this mode of 
reaching it would be apt to make it appear as a mere 
addendum, possessed of no original power. As a matter 
of fact, this is far from correct, and here again it becomes 
manifest that the experiences of religion are the same as 
those which belong to all spiritual life, only that they are 
here more clearly realised. For example, the way in 
which man works himself up to something in no way 
decides the quality of the experience to which the work 
conducts him ; the manner of climbing does not af- 
fect the view which is reached upon the height. Some- 
thing which is dependent on very various conditions and 
modes of communication may yet, when once it stands 
out clearly, make immediate appeal to us and display 
an original power. Were it not so, then all cultivation of 
the individual and all civilisation of mankind, — things 
which cause us so much trouble, — would be merely 
artificial adjuncts ; they could never become part of our 
truly personal life. Life and history alike would be 
processes of growing always older and more senile. The 
life-process peels off, in the end, the husk which was indis- 
pensable to its development, and all the complexity of 
work yields place to the youthful freshness of first-hand 
experiences, which carry their confirmation within them- 
selves. For in the long run it is life only which can prove 
the truth of life. Here also things are turned round : 



i 3 o CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

real original experience, and with it genuine conviction, 
lies at the end of the road and not at the beginning. This 
emancipation of spiritual life from the method by which 
we reach it is effected in all departments of life, but most 
strikingly and radically in religion. For religion, looked 
at from the genetic point of view, has more pre-condi- 
tions than the other departments, and is, therefore, the 
most exposed to doubt and denial. Once attained to 
maturity, however, it is the most simple and original of 
them all, that which makes the most direct and intelligi- 
ble response to man's concern for spiritual self-preserva- 
tion, for a salvation of the soul. 

With all its certainty, however, religion yet remains 
a matter of freedom and personal decision, — here also 
in complete accord with the other departments of spiritual 
creation. For none of these hold man by mechanical 
constraint ; they demand that he shall enter freely into 
the movement for the furtherance of their aims. Only 
then do they communicate their experiences and give us 
to see the richness of their life ; only then do they become 
convincing. Where the mind remains closed to their 
work and aims, they must seem mere illusions. How 
foolish the thinker must appear in his concern for scien- 
tific truth, or the artist in his care for artistic truth, when 
the whole ideal of truth leaves the soul completely cold ! 
How unintelligible then seem all the results of the search 
after truth, how easy it is to refute them with shallow 
reasoning or biting mockery ! In the case of religion 
the problem is still more serious, because here we are 
concerned not with developments of life along special 
lines, but with life as a whole. Here, in particular, it 
depends entirely upon our personal entry into the move- 
ment whether or not this development of life becomes 



MOVEMENT TOWARDS RELIGION 131 

convincing and compelling. The entry is not forced 
upon anyone, but it is easy to show that to decline it 
robs life of its soul, and that only unthorough thinking 
can conceal the sharp Either-Or which runs through the 
whole of man's life and finds its clearest expression in 
religion. We are agreed, moreover, in regard to the world 
of thought, that our views of reality are limited by the 
altitude of our life's level. Thus a struggle for truth of 
conviction is pre-eminently a struggle for loftiness of life. 



C. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANSWER 

Preliminary Considerations 

If we now turn to Christianity as a matter of actual 
history, we must first of all consider what attitude our 
previous investigation forces us to adopt in dealing with a 
historical fact of this kind. To this end it is important 
to understand clearly both the relationship of Christian- 
ity to other religions, and that of the different forms of 
Christianity to each other. The convictions we have 
developed assign very definite limits to all historical 
achievement; within these limits, however, they allow 
it no mean importance. Its importance and its limits, 
taken together, give rise to a distinctive mode of treating 
the matter and open up great problems. 

Our enquiry showed us that religion is before all else 
a common experience of mankind. We all feel the long- 
ing for spiritual self-preservation; we all share in the 
opening-up of a new life which this self-preservation 
entails. As all development of genuine spirituality in 
our human sphere depends in last resort upon this new 
movement, anyone who wishes to deprive man of his 
share in it would have to let him fall out of the spiritual 
world altogether. Therefore, we must most resolutely 
resist the claim of any one particular religion, Christianity 
included, to be the one and only true religion to the 
exclusion and rejection of all others. It is only necessary 
to think out the consequences of a claim of this kind in 
order to feel its monstrosity. Other religions besides 

132 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 133 

Christianity allow man to live and die in the belief that 
divine life is ruling within him and drawing him away 
and beyond himself. If now the manifestation of divin- 
ity be limited to Christianity, then this belief can be 
nothing more than a gross illusion ; the supposed revela- 
tion becomes mere semblance and deception. And such a 
conclusion would seem quite tenable so long as man 
belonged wholly to an exclusive circle and rejected root 
and branch everything that lay outside it. That was the 
mediaeval way, but it cannot be the way of our modern 
age. For its infinitely wider horizon and its delightful 
power of sympathising with human development over 
the widest possible area brings to our notice a wealth of 
other forms, and shows us so much honest striving in 
them, so much work and sacrifice, shows us too, amid all 
differences, so close a relationship in men's fundamental 
problems and experiences, that it becomes absolutely 
impossible to throw all this aside and see in it only a 
wandering from the true goal, only illusion, deception, and 
superstition. Yet it is only a confused thinking which 
can seek to take a middle course in this matter. If the 
divine power was not at work in those religions, then 
there was something undivine and anti-divine ; every- 
thing in them was gross idolatry, and they were only 
caricatures of religion. But if we are to believe this, how 
dare we ground our culture upon classical antiquity 
which would seem on this hypothesis to have been all 
empty illusion to its very foundations? Will anyone 
with an intimate knowledge of the lifework of men such as 
^Eschylus and Pindar, Plato and Plotinus, be bold enough 
to deny their deep piety and decry them as idolaters? 
Even in the early days, the leading Christian thinkers 
were eagerly intent on widening the scope of Christian- 



i 3 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

ity, and making it pass beyond the sphere of its histori- 
cal associations into an universal religion. The greatest 
thinker of Eastern Christianity, Origen, is of opinion 
that the love of God, whom he willingly calls "God over 
all" (6 iirl iracn 0eo'?), embraces all times and nations, 
and that without Him nothing good happens among men. 
In Christianity, indeed, with its entry of the divine into 
the world, he sees the highest proof of this goodness, but 
for him it is only the climax of what has been going on 
through the whole history of humanity. It is to Augus- 
tine, however, the grandest spirit of Western Christianity 
that we owe the words : " What is now called Christian 
religion was in existence also among men of old time, and 
has never been lacking since the beginning of the human 
race, till Christ Himself appeared in the flesh (in came). 
Since that time the true religion already in existence has 
begun to be called the Christian religion." To men who 
hold such convictions Christianity means something 
more than a limited historical work. And if it really 
means more, then the conception of a religion which 
takes in all the manifold varieties of religious life is at 
least brought very near. It cannot, therefore, be deemed 
an error when philosophy treats religion as a concern 
common to the whole of humanity and rejects every 
attempt to narrow it down to a particular clique as in- 
tolerable particularism. 

But on the other hand we must do justice to the fact 
that it was only as embodied in historic forms that reli- 
gion became an independent reality and acquired power 
to penetrate life. It is precisely our conception of reli- 
gion as the opening-up of a new transcendent life which 
militates against any complete agreement of these 
various forms. If religion were a mere scheme of doc- 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 135 

trines concerning things human and divine, a light 
thrown upon our human existence from a world above 
it, if the spiritual movement in general proceeded from 
concepts to life and not from life to concepts, then it would 
be at least conceivable that we should find ourselves 
agreed on certain fundamental doctrines and that we 
should seek to maintain everywhere that which we had 
won through common effort. But we have seen that 
the case is actually very different. In religion we are 
concerned with the attainment of a life which seizes upon 
us with overmastering force and lifts us beyond our 
original condition on to a new level. The needful thing 
here is a strong shock of upheaval, a break with the old, 
a spontaneous up welling of fresh springs of life. But 
religion can attain to this power and influence only 
under quite special circumstances and conditions, only on 
those few pinnacles of history where a constraining power, 
becoming the primal inspiration of great personalities, 
has impelled life and effort away from all other 
cares and all the wavering uncertainties of reflective 
deliberation. It is only where spiritual and divine life 
thus breaks through that a fire has been kindled which 
could burn through the centuries, only thus that a unity 
has arisen, sole of its kind, which could stamp all the 
manifold varieties of life with a common impress, thereby 
creating a unique type, and, through the aims it thus 
disclosed, welding human effort firmly together through 
the long chain of the centuries. Is it not falling into a 
void to cut oneself adrift from this further specification 
and individualisation of religious life ? 

The matter would be simple enough and might be 
taken as already decided, if there were only one kind of 
historic individualisation, but, as it happens, there are 



136 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

many, and what is right for the one must be right for the 
others also. Or are we, when faced by the plurality of 
religions, to assert the truth of the particular one in 
which we happen to have been born and to defend it with 
all the passion of our being ? To use a phrase of Rous- 
seau's, is our belief to be a matter of geography, and are 
we to be rewarded for being born in Rome and not in 
Mecca? As conscious and reflective beings we cannot 
do other than survey, compare, and measure. But if we 
seek a standard of measurement, we can find none other 
than the service which the particular religion has ren- 
dered to the general religious problem ; that is to say, 
the individualisation which will seem most valuable to 
us, the one to which we shall seek to attach ourselves, 
will be that which takes in the widest area of religious 
life and shows the greatest power of leading beyond 
mere general outlines, — that which makes religion most 
completely real both for the individual and for humanity. 
Christianity, no less than other religions, must submit 
to this test. 

To this problem of the place of Christianity among the 
religions, there is allied also the further problem of the 
relationship of the particular forms of Christianity to each 
other. Various forms have arisen, and all lay claim to 
the possession of the Christian truth and the Christian 
life ; but this produces a similar complication to that 
which we met before in dealing with the different reli- 
gions. It seems as though none of the particular Chris- 
tian confessions can command full devotion or stimulate 
energy to its utmost, unless it is convinced that it is the 
best and even the only legitimate representative of 
Christian truth, the others being all inferior and degener- 
ate. But if this idea be really taken seriously, — as 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 137 

Roman Catholicism in particular shows considerable 
disposition to take it, — then there grows up a harshness 
of judgment which is quite intolerable. For the other 
confessions may then be regarded not as lawful competi- 
tors, but as illegal usurpers, perverters of the truth, and 
therefore as irreconcilable adversaries to be extermin- 
ated root and branch. He who shrinks from such harsh 
judgment is compelled to seek a wider conception of 
Christian truth and Christian life, to lift them on to a 
higher platform than that of creeds and formularies, and 
thus cultivate more friendly relations with other churches. 
But supposing he does this, supposing he looks upon the 
different churches as mere temporary manifestations, as 
individualisations of a general Christian movement, then 
how can we avoid asking whether the movement has 
exhausted itself in these forms, and whether perhaps 
those great historical changes which we have convinced 
ourselves are now at work do not come into conflict with our 
present systems and urgently drive us to seek new ones ? 
Thus the question whether we can still be Christians 
splits up into two questions. In the first place we must 
come to a clear understanding as to whether the religious 
formation which we find in Christianity has really the 
fundamental content which will enable it to maintain 
itself as the supreme climax of religious life, in face of all 
the attacks and opposition which it must encounter 
to-day, and whether the changes which it must undergo 
really promise to strengthen rather than weaken its 
power and truth ; and further there arises the question 
whether the forms in which Christianity is at present 
enshrined are really capable of including the truth- 
content of the life which has been gradually growing up 
anew in the movements and experiences of the last few 



138 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

centuries, — whether our very anxiety for the full 
strength and effectiveness of the Christian life does not 
drive us to seek something beyond them. 

For the treatment of these questions our previous 
investigations offer certain definite points of support. 
We convinced ourselves as to the distinctive aim of 
Christianity and we saw also what misgivings and 
opposition it was exciting in the modern world. We 
convinced ourselves again that this modern world, de- 
spite the great and lasting achievements for which it 
is responsible, yet shows itself unskilled and vacillating 
when dealing with ultimate questions on unassailable 
ground, whereas on points where it professes competence 
it is extremely open to attack and can hardly do other 
than depress and destroy life. This maze of intersecting 
movement drove us to an independent consideration 
of the problem in abstraction from the special conditions 
of the age. We then found that religion became ex- 
tremely valuable to us, but the question still remained 
unsettled as to how far this valuation might apply 
to its historical development and our relation to this 
development. Not only must all this be kept in mind 
during our enquiry and investigation, but it is also im- 
portant to be particularly careful that it shall not be our 
own subjective opinions and valuations which are 
allowed to find expression and bias our decision, but 
rather the movements and changes of our common life 
as they unfold in the world's history, — changes which 
have altered not so much man's condition and mood 
as the constitution of the spiritual life. Only in the 
practice of such restraint is there a hope of counteracting 
the manifold dangers which an undertaking of this kind 
entails. 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 139 

It is however our intention first of all to run through 
the main points in which the unique character of Chris- 
tianity was more especially brought out, and then to 
investigate briefly its general position and the demands 
which the maintenance of that position involves. 

I. The Just Claims of Christianity and its 
Capacity for Renewal 

1. Christianity had brought support and comfort 
to mankind in a troublous age. Resolutely inverting 
the primitive condition of things, it made religion with 
its God-turned gaze and its God-filled life the one main 
controlling factor whence it proceeded to fashion all 
life. In pursuit of this aim it gave rise in mediaeval 
times to an all-inclusive religious civilisation whose 
effects reach right down to the present day. But the 
main trend of modern thought has been offering an 
ever more effective opposition to this conception and 
limitation of life. The world has acquired greater value 
in man's eyes, attracted him more strongly and at the 
same time incited him to greater personal activity, 
giving him more to discover, more to develop, and making 
him find his full satisfaction therein to an ever increasing 
extent. But it was impossible for the immediate environ- 
ment to become thus his familiar home, the place where 
he felt himself most at ease, without the other world 
losing its lustre and the divine becoming a mere deepen- 
ing and accompaniment of the cosmos till at last it 
seemed to vanish altogether. At the same time there 
grew up a f eeling of antagonism to a merely religious sys- 
tem of life and its control of all human things. Gradually 
and often by hard struggle the other departments of 



140 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

life won independence. It seemed as though they must 
have this independence and abandon their continual 
blandishing and ogling of religion before they could de- 
velop with fidelity and clearness the truth-content latent 
within them. A movement of this kind could appeal to 
a common reason indwelling in all men, — reason not 
merely as a critical but also as a positive and constructive 
power. In such reason there was naturally involved 
the desire for a universal culture embracing and inspiring 
all individual departments. The old religious system 
came to be regarded from this point of view as in- 
tolerably narrow, just as the individual also found the 
merely religious form of life too narrow. 

These are changes which must be reckoned with by 
everyone who seeks to keep abreast of the times, — 
changes not in individuals merely, but in the whole life 
of humanity, affecting not mainly subjective feeling but 
the essential character of work. Admitting all this, 
however, the question still remains whether these changes 
are final and conclusive, or whether they themselves do 
not rather give rise to new complications. It is quite 
true that there has been a greater output of activity in 
our immediate environment, and that this has given a 
heightened value to the world around us. But our own 
investigations have shown how little this activity avails to 
fill the deep need of the soul and how the restless haste 
for increase of power leaves life, in the long run, ab- 
solutely empty. The modern growth of activity pro- 
vokes inevitably two questions, two demands : the ac- 
tivity, if it is to mean the advance of the whole man, 
must rise to the height of spiritual creation, and again, 
if it is to overcome inner restlessness and senseless hurry, 
it must win a counterpoise: it must rest in eternal 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 141 

verities and find peace of soul. But this deepen- 
ing, completing process can never be supplied by the 
machinery of this present world, effective though it 
be. It can come only through rising above it, that 
is, by turning to religion. It is just here that we 
strike the essential difference between the temper of 
our own time and that of early Christianity. That tired 
and listless age sought every possible excuse for suspen- 
sion of its own activity. It sought rest, in opposition 
to activity, as a sure haven from the storms of life, and 
found this rest in God alone. "Thou hast created us 
for Thyself and our heart is restless till it rest in Thee" 
(Augustine). We on the other hand are full of a strong 
vitality. In the progress of activity we find the hope 
and joy of our fives. We cannot possibly cease to act, 
and give ourselves up to calm repose. If the divine power 
is to manifest itself to us, it must do so not in opposition 
to activity but within it, by deepening, ennobling, and 
spiritualising it. Nowhere does divinity seem more 
present than in the process whereby this activity acquires 
an independent status, a being-for-self . 

The development of this point of view gives us a new 
type of religious life. It demands a more active kind 
of religion, in which divine and human are no longer so 
opposed that he who would rightly honour God must 
perforce entertain a low opinion of man. Here rather 
the ennobling of man is regarded as a work of God. 
Freedom and grace no longer stand in opposition but are 
complementary aspects of one and the same process. 
A consciousness of power is no longer incompatible 
with reverence, but the two sentiments demand and 
help each other. Thus a more manly, upright, joyful 
type of life replaces the older devotion which seems 



142 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

to us cringing and servile. This greater activity, 
however, is in no wise opposed to the real spirit of Chris- 
tianity. If Christianity concerned itself primarily with 
suffering rather than with action, that was largely due 
to the special conditions of its time. Moreover, Chris- 
tianity was very far from looking upon suffering as a 
dull endurance. In suffering it discovered a more hidden 
form of activity out of which it developed a new life. 
It did not value sorrow and hindrance for their own sake, 
but only as they deepened life. Thus in that atmosphere 
the saying could well arise that suffering is the climax 
of activity (passio summa actio). If in the course of 
history this active side may often have become obscured, 
it has again and again been brought into prominence. 
The Reformation here plays an important part, for its 
essential spirit finds expression chiefly in its rejection 
of all blind devotion and the committal of the soul 
mainly to its own experience. To-day we are driven 
yet further than the position taken up by the Reforma- 
tion, since this movement, particularly in its Lutheran 
form, restricted activity too closely to inward experience 
and left the wicked world to its own ways or to the 
dispensations of Providence. We on the other hand 
are concerned to see that the divine power shall manifest 
itself more vigorously in the world around us and per- 
meate it through and through. So much is certain, 
that a higher estimate of activity and a more manly 
type of life do not imply a break with the main tendency 
of Christian life, but only a further development of it. 

At the same time our position towards the world 
undergoes a change. We saw how modern thought 
demanded a closer contact between world and God, 
and sought it within the world rather than outside of it. 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 143 

This tendency explains the power of pantheism in the 
spiritual life of to-day, the magic which lies in the 
word "immanence." The world has become far more 
to us ; revealed infinitely more beauty, coherence, and 
life; we can no longer find any pleasure in touching 
wails over its wickedness. But we saw too that this 
growth of the world's power was made possible only 
through the working of a spiritual life above it and 
beneath it, a life which fashioned it and found itself 
again in it. Therefore pantheism, with its identification 
of world and God, must seem to us merely a misinter- 
pretation and perversion of the facts. That the God- 
head is more actively at work in the world, as our modern 
era has begun to perceive, gives no ground for affirming 
that it loses itself in the world. Transcendence is essen- 
tial to the idea of divinity. If the world is the whole of 
reality, then there is no longer any room for a God. 
Pantheism must be resolutely put aside on this ground 
above all others, that it is a vacillating compromise 
which obscures the great problem and saps life's energy. 
It suffers from half -hear tedness. It desires something 
more than the mere juxtaposition of objects which 
constitutes the world of sense-experience, and it empha- 
sises its rejection of all crass materialism, but it shrinks 
from according to this " something more," any inde- 
pendent status, any existence in its own right. It wishes 
it to remain so reticent, so modest, so shadowy, as not 
to alter the constitution of things or bind life in any 
way at all, so that we can in fact scarcely find a trace of 
it save when it becomes important to cover up de- 
ficiencies with a little ornament. As a matter of fact 
the experiences of the nineteenth century give partic- 
ularly poor justification for the pantheistic concep- 



i 4 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

tion of reality as a realm of pure reason. For we look 
at nature very differently from our forefathers. It no 
longer seems to us a realm of soulful harmony and 
blessed peace, but rather a complex riddle, the arena 
on which a perpetual struggle for existence is being 
enacted. Men, too, in the wild vortex of political and 
social struggles, lose the romantic glory of former days ; 
and even the exaltation of personality so usual to-day, 
of its grandeur, dignity, and so on, — unless grounded on 
something greater and deeper, — becomes merely a hol- 
low and irrelevant phrase, especially in an age which so 
forces upon our notice the smallness and self-seeking of 
man. As things stand, the only choice is between 
theism and atheism. Theism, however, may take 
different forms, and we are indeed forced through our 
work and experience to-day to strive after a new form. 
But the Either-Or is not thereby removed nor its force 
weakened. 

The changed direction in which man seeks reality, — 
expressed by pantheism, however crookedly and im- 
perfectly, as regards the cosmic outlook, — extends 
also to life's work and gives rise here to still greater 
complications. As our tasks within the world grow 
constantly more exacting and claim more and more of 
our energy, we are impelled to look for God in close 
connexion with human life rather than in some trans- 
cendental relation to it. The specifically religious 
element pales before our activity in the human sphere. 
The phrase of Novalis "Amid men must man seek God" 
is, when understood in this sense, a confession of our 
modern faith. But here again we are liable to the error 
of glorifying the human as we find it in everyday ex- 
perience, without any reference to remoter depths, and 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 145 

of making it the end and aim of all activity. Thus the 
movement in the direction of a socialistic culture which 
is so widespread to-day is only valuable and justifiable 
when it keeps within the setting of the spiritual and at 
the same time the religious life ; it leads into error and 
delusion the moment it severs itself from this and pre- 
tends to completeness in itself. For what further goal 
then remains save man's well-being and comfort, the 
path to which leads inevitably into weakness and epi- 
cureanism? Life becomes also a prey to the illusion 
that numbers, of themselves, can raise the inward level, 
that quantity can without further ado be transmuted 
into quality, an illusion which the impressions and 
experiences of our own day are surely sufficient to dissi- 
pate. Plato somewhere says that the State can only 
be rightly guided by the man who knows something 
higher than the State. Similarly, we might say that 
only he who knows something higher than human nature 
can truly help man and humanity. Though there may be 
good reason then why modern effort should seek to turn 
religious activity mainly in the direction of man, yet if it 
reject in the process everything that leads beyond the 
merely human, if it transform all culture into merely 
humanistic culture, then the whole movement must 
tend to the production of an unspeakably dead level, 
and socialistic culture must prove irreconcilably antag- 
onistic not only to religion, but also to all genuinely 
spiritual culture. Thus it is extraordinarily important 
that whilst the immanental movement should maintain 
its rights even in the world of work, yet the divine trans- 
cendence through which alone things human acquire 
their value should at the same time be carefully guarded. 
Another point of importance was the position of re- 



146 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

ligion in the whole field of life. The modern world 
in its development broke through the narrow bounds of 
a purely religious system and placed the other depart- 
ments of life on an independent footing. Once pos- 
sessed of this, they have driven religion further and 
further back, and often even contested her right to any 
place whatsoever. But great as has been the gain to 
life in added richness and mobility, complications have 
also made their appearance which forbid our passing 
as yet any final verdict. The sections of culture into 
which life is thus split up, — scientific, technical, eco- 
nomic, and so on, — all have their own different lines and 
pull man now hither, now thither. He cannot transcend 
these oppositions, unless he work his way upward to a 
totality of culture and find some task which belongs to 
man's nature as a whole. Our investigation of the 
spiritual life has shown us that it is possible to do this, 
but it has shown us at the same time that grave problems 
here make their appearance, and that we cannot solve 
them without a radical transformation of primitive 
conditions and without turning to religion for help. 
Apart from that help, there can be no possibility of 
making a whole out of life, no chance for concentration 
to keep pace with expansion. 

Thus religion remains even for the man of to-day an 
essential constituent of life, but its position has cer- 
tainly undergone no inconsiderable change. It stands 
now within a comprehensive whole of life, and is invested 
with the supremely important task of giving it a soul, 
but at the same time it may not break loose from its 
setting and aspire after direct control of the other de- 
partments, or again make for itself a special sphere 
for which it claims a peculiar sanctity. The former 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 147 

is rather the tendency of Catholicism, the latter of 
ecclesiastical Protestantism. As against the former 
we may note that though religion may indeed claim 
to influence all departments of life, yet this influence, 
if it is not to be an oppressive burden and stumbling- 
block, must remain indirect, must be conveyed through 
the medium of life as a whole. If religion is to dictate 
outright to the other departments of life, — science in 
particular, — as to their proper aims, then we must have 
a very poor estimate of these departments, and es- 
pecially of science, if we do not feel that they are being 
subjected to unseemly humiliation and serious wrong. 
It is true that the free development of life's various 
branches must give us cause to expect much complication 
and error, but if above all there is a whole of life, then 
we must fight such error from the standing-ground of 
this whole. No one could fear that religion would suffer 
any serious damage from this freedom of movement, if 
he once recognised its independent and primal character. 
If it really possess this, as we convinced ourselves 
was the case, then it is at bottom a want of faith to 
shrink back from the struggle and prefer a safe, i.e. an 
apparently safe, tranquillity. 

But an isolation of religion should be opposed no less 
strenuously than an intermeddling of religion. Such 
isolation brings with it a twofold evil. There is a danger 
for religion itself, lest it lose connexion with the roots 
whence it draws its vitality and thus become stiff 
and formal, and there is a danger for man lest he shut 
himself off from everything that lies outside this narrow 
circle, and even look upon such narrowness as partic- 
ularly meritorious. Every attempt to shape life ex- 
clusively from the point of view of one particular 



148 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

branch of it brings about inevitably its decadence and 
decline and finally endangers its truth. This is as cer- 
tain for religion as it is for art and for science ; the case 
of religion is none the better because in its isolation it 
affects superiority and takes the name of God upon its 
lips. 

Thus we have seen how the historical situation requires 
that religion to-day shall occupy a different position 
from that which it formerly held in the economy of life. 
But if it can no longer dominate as it used to do, it does 
not thereby become just one option among others ; 
if it has more enemies to fight without, it does not thereby 
lose its inner certainty. No breach with Christianity 
is implied in the new development we are here striving 
after. The problem with which we are concerned is the 
old and abiding problem of the relation of religion to life. 
Within Christianity itself various forms of solution are 
attempted and various solutions are to-day found side 
by side. Thus further attempts cannot be deemed a 
priori as a breaking away from the whole Christian 
scheme, and we demand in the interests of Christianity 
itself that they shall be allowed a free course. 

2. Christianity is a religion of the spirit. It asserts 
in a peculiarly forceful way the fundamental concept 
common to all the higher religions of the superiority 
of the spiritual life ; it has also lifted moral action 
on to a plane which transcends all natural impulse. 
As, in its conception of creation, it makes nature spring 
in last resort from spirit, so it regards too the unfolding 
of nature's processes as above all else the manifestation 
of spiritual power and wisdom. Against this view the 
modern world entered most vigorous protest. Not 
only did nature become more independent and demand 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 149 

her own rights, but her claims soon extended back 
into the spiritual life itself, till finally she put forward 
her own world as supreme and explained everything 
spiritual as being a mere annex and, in fact, her own 
production. When all spiritual life thus came to be 
regarded as a merely human phenomenon, and man 
as an isolated and limited being, it seemed an unpardon- 
able piece of anthropomorphism to interpret the world 
from the spiritual standpoint and subject it to spiritual 
aims. Changes such as these, however, meant the ex- 
tinction of all possibility of a religion. 

This was a dangerous attack, but still more dangerous 
than the attack on spirituality in general was an attack 
on the distinctively Christian conception of the spiritual 
life, — more dangerous because it arose from within and 
in the interests of the spiritual life itself. The Christian 
conception, with the stress it lays on soul-inwardness 
and personal relationships, becomes much too small and 
narrow to suit the spirit of modern culture ; it seems too 
closely associated with the human desire for happiness 
and human ways in general to be able to cut loose 
from these and control the universe. Modern thought, 
therefore, holds that genuine spiritual life can only be 
reached when we widen out and rise above this human 
and personal conception, to which the foremost leaders 
of modern movements are directly antagonistic, — 
Spinoza, for example, and Hegel. Thought, in particular, 
they regard as able to develop an independent character 
and strength greater than man's, able in fact to prove it- 
self a cosmic force. Comprehensive complexes of ideas 
come into being, display a distinctive content, and 
endow themselves with a power of movement. Instead 
of obeying man, they on their side make him their ser- 



150 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

vant and use his faculties for their own ends. Thus 
men have spoken, and still speak, of ideas that mould 
the world's history. To-day, for example, we hear 
much about social ideas which give direction to the 
efforts of the community and bind individuals together 
with compelling force. The personal glow of the spiritual 
life yields place to something objective and impersonal : 
it is the compelling necessity of the thing itself which is 
to decide everything ; it is in the subjugation of every- 
thing personal to these objective demands that life first 
attains its highest level. The result is that not only must 
cosmic concepts which are framed from the point of view 
of the spiritual life change in the direction of impersonal- 
ity, and the idea of a personal God also meet with the 
strongest opposition, — but the essential constitution of 
life must also be transformed, so that instead of a deed it 
becomes rather an event, a process. The unavoidable 
loss in warmth and spiritual intimacy seems to be far 
outweighed by the gain in breadth, power, and objective 
truth. Thus the matter still stands to-day, and we ask 
ourselves how, in face of all these countermovements 
alike from without and within, the human and personal 
tone of Christianity can be justified and maintained. 

We may say here at the outset that from the very 
beginning Christianity's main endeavour was not 
directed towards securing unconditional happiness for 
man as he is; it sought first and foremost to make 
something new out of him, and it was only to the renewed 
man that it promised a genuine happiness, that is to say, 
peace and blessedness. It does not value man at all 
as mere man, but only as a member of a moral order. 
The ethical problem will have to engage our attention 
shortly ; at this juncture the chief thing to remember is 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 151 

that Christianity itself contains much that serves to 
counteract a purely ethical conception of life in the sense 
in which the word is generally used. How could it 
have diverged so decidedly from Judaism if it did not 
proclaim a unity of human nature and divine, therewith 
putting a check on moralism and taking a step in the 
direction of metaphysics ? From this point onwards 
through the whole course of Christianity, two streams 
of thought have run along side by side, — one ethical 
and one speculative. They give rise not only to different 
thought- worlds and different conceptions of God, but 
also to different types of life. The ethical type strives 
after emancipation from all sin and a personal relation- 
ship to God, and regards conduct based on right feeling 
as the highest goal of life. The speculative, on the other 
hand, seeks to escape from the isolating, fluctuating 
character of man's immediate existence into the eternal 
unity, and to find, in the union of his being with the 
source of all reality, unutterable blessedness and a peace 
which is not of this world. Here life culminates not in 
moral conduct, but in mystical contemplation with its 
" divinising" of man. To the moralist, God is the holy 
and benevolent personality ; to the mystic, on the other 
hand, He is the Absolute Being, beyond the reach of 
human thought, and cannot possibly be conceived as 
personal. In the life of the Church, the ethical bias 
predominates; the speculative has found its outlet in 
mysticism, but its influence reaches far beyond this 
particular setting, and, as an inspiring background, 
affects the whole of the Christian life. Greek and Roman 
Catholicism have been particularly successful in keeping 
firm hold on both tendencies and allowing each to in- 
fluence the other. That ecclesiastical Protestantism has 



152 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

let mysticism drop cannot in our opinion be regarded 
as telling in its favour. But greatly as this dual ten- 
dency has contributed to the widening of life, yet when 
once the historical consciousness is awakened and a 
clearer insight won into the characteristic features of 
the diverse formations of human life, it becomes im- 
possible to rest content in the traditional view with 
its dual conception of God, its twofold rendering of 
life, and its easy tolerance of a personal and an imper- 
sonal scheme of life side by side. Thus the effort to 
transcend this duality is really a response to a problem 
which is inherent in Christianity itself, but such an effort 
becomes possible when we start from the concept of the 
spiritual life as that which includes and concentrates 
all the characteristic features of human existence. 

It must not be imagined, however, that human life 
and effort must always have to choose between a warm, 
but somewhat narrow and stupid, personal type, and an 
impersonal alternative which, though broad, is cold and 
soulless. Our previous enquiry has enabled us to see 
that every act of spiritual creation involves a transcen- 
dence of this opposition, inasmuch as it does not leave 
the objective element outside itself, but absorbs and 
thereby ensouls it, while at the same time it develops 
the subjective side and unites it with the other to form a 
new life. The tendency here is to lift both subjective 
and objective to a higher level and thus pass beyond the 
cleavage and arrive again at a unity, — a unity, however, 
which no longer stands within an opposition, but 
embraces and co-ordinates both sides of it. Thus we 
must strive to get beyond the conflict between imper- 
sonality and a personality humanly conceived to a 
deeper conception of personality as unfolding a spiritual 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 153 

character, seeking to reconcile the ethical movement 
with the speculative, and counteracting the tendency of 
human life to fall, as it does to-day, into the extremes 
of vague subjectivity or soulless work. Here we see a 
movement towards the very same goal which is pre- 
sented to Christianity, — a life-unity that is both 
inclusive and transcendent. That we should cling to 
the word " personal" as descriptive of that unity is not 
due to any love of the mere word, which we could easily 
consent to drop. It is due rather to that which lies 
behind the word. Thinkers such as Leibniz and Kant, 
whom no one can accuse of a crass anthropomorphism, 
have used it to designate the transcendence of the spirit- 
ual life. We desire to retain it in order that the spiritual 
may be understood and recognised as an active element, 
and the divine as self-determining life, not as the mys- 
terious, dreamy, enchained process which romanticism 
conceived it to be. But our object becomes imperilled, 
or at least obscured, if once we designate and treat 
the ultimate cause of things as impersonal. Because 
concepts drawn from human life do not satisfy us com- 
pletely, we must not, therefore, sink back upon something 
infra-human, as has so often happened and is happening 
in many quarters to-day. 

It is indeed true that the desire for a new and tran- 
scendent unity affects very seriously the shaping of our 
lives; and religion, in particular, must undergo very 
considerable modifications. It must penetrate further 
back than the immediate psychical state, and make this 
the expression of a greater spiritual depth. It must 
develop more spiritual substance instead of fostering 
subjective excitement. It will also exercise much 
greater restraint in its concepts, and emphasise more 



154 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

strongly the symbolic character of all man's statements 
about God. History, however, shows very distinctly 
that the clear consciousness of the inadequacy of all 
human concepts goes eminently well with a vigorous re- 
ligious life. It was Plotinus who first made it perfectly 
clear that all man's statements about the supreme Being 
were mere simile, but there is scarcely any other great 
thinker, even within Christianity itself, who had so 
genuine and powerful a religious experience. 

In the spiritual life, moreover, we recognised a new 
stage of reality in which the whole of the universe 
reveals its depth to man and calls upon him to share 
in its working. Once it has thus awakened in him and 
become his own deed, he knows himself to be in posses- 
sion of a world, and, in the maintenance of the spiritual 
life in his own experience, in the winning of a soul for 
his life, he finds a task which is far above all subjective 
excitement and all selfish desire for happiness. 

But once a world thus opens to us from within and 
gives our life a cosmic character, we can forthwith offer 
a successful resistance to the encroachments of nature 
and its domination of spirituality. To the world which 
presses on us from without, we are now able to oppose this 
new world. It is true that at the same time far more im- 
portance is to be attributed to nature. The fact that in 
these modern days nature has acquired a more inde- 
pendent status and has shown her capacity by the pro- 
digious extent of her output entitles her to play a more 
important part in our lives, and forbids our following the 
precedent of early Christianity in annexing the great 
realm of nature so closely and directly to the spiritual life. 

This becomes particularly apparent when we are 
dealing with the question of miracles of a physical order. 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 155 

The denial of these affects very profoundly the consti- 
tution of historical Christianity, but this consideration 
cannot warrant a refusal to admit what is necessary. 
In this matter different trains of thought meet together 
and mutually strengthen each other. The fact that to- 
day we are not quite so confident of the uniformity of 
all natural process as we were a little while ago does not 
lessen our objection to such a violation of nature's 
order as is implied in miracles. A miracle which sets 
itself in opposition to the whole structure of the universe 
must, at the very least, be attested with absolute cer- 
tainty and put beyond all possibility of doubt. But 
we know to-day how difficult such proof is, and, on the 
other hand, we have a more accurate understanding 
of the exuberance of the religious imagination. We 
know how easily it soars beyond the limits of experience 
and finds in its environment a ready disposition to credit 
even its boldest creations. 

That on which religion really depends and must 
always depend is something quite different. Regarded 
from the naturalistic standpoint, it is an inner miracle, 
the appearance of a new order of life, a new stage of 
reality; it is the process in which the spiritual life be- 
comes independent. Now as this independence was the 
guiding thought and main result of our whole enquiry, 
we can simply appeal to it here without further argument. 
If the spiritual life has been shown to be independent in 
virtue of its own content and its own power, then the 
mere fact that it develops in man under natural condi- 
tions, and that he is altogether most closely knit with 
nature, cannot raise any doubt on the main issue. We 
may of course fall victims to the mistake of confounding 
the conditions of a process with its creative cause. 



156 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

It is a mistake often made to-day, but its usualness is no 
justification. To repeat an error does not lift it to the 
rank of truth. 

If, however, the uniqueness and independence of the 
spiritual life are once established beyond doubt, then 
the difficult question arises of the relation between nature 
and spirit. Here there are only two possibilities, not 
three, as lovers of vague compromise imagine. Either 
nature is the root of all reality, in which case spirit is a 
mere accompaniment or by-product, or else the essential 
thing is spirit and nature is but a phase or stage in its 
development. The third theory, — that of complete 
equality or complete parallelism, to use a frequent but 
somewhat warped metaphor, — is absolutely impossible, 
as impossible as to give two centres of gravity to one 
body. In truth, neither past nor present endeavours 
have ever succeeded in establishing a complete equality. 
One could offer a prize for the discovery of anything of 
the kind and there would be small danger of ever being 
required to give it. For one of the two, either nature or 
spirit, will always remain of primal importance, while the 
other is explained in the light of it. What passes to-day 
as monism is far from being a settlement of the oppo- 
sition ; on the contrary, it stands wholly on the side of 
nature; it believes that natural concepts can be so 
widened as to include the spiritual life, and it fails to see 
that all that is distinctive and valuable in spiritual life is 
lost in the process. The main reason for this failure is 
that it conceives the psychical life as being merely a 
sum-total of manifestations in individuals, and it leaves 
out of count the larger connexions which it sets up in 
the life of the world and the new goods and values to 
which it gives rise. 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 157 

Our investigation, on the other hand, showing as it 
does that in the move towards spirituality life proceeds 
from a kingdom of mere connexions to one of spiritual 
freedom, has made spirit into the very heart of reality. 
Thus we range ourselves on the side of the spiritual and 
seek our ultimate explanation not by moving from 
nature to spirit, but from spirit, rather, to nature. That 
the spiritual should make its appearance among us at 
a later stage of development, presenting itself as a kind 
of final chapter, does not alter the situation in the slight- 
est, for we are not concerned with its outward position, 
but rather with the question whether this apparently 
final chapter is merely a continuation of the earlier one, or 
whether it brings in something new. If the latter 
alternative be the true one, — and we have seen that it is, 
— then the end becomes a fresh beginning ; the indepen- 
dent primal quality of the spiritual life is not threatened 
in any way ; the idea of development no longer signifies 
that all later manifestations must be referred back to 
initial forces, but the inward level may rise as the move- 
ment proceeds. This, moreover, involves the further 
possibility that something which appears at a later 
stage of the movement may really be the guiding power 
controlling it from the outset. To sum up, everything in 
last resort hinges on the simple question whether the 
opening-up of the spiritual life brings about a fresh primal 
experience or not. If it does, then the many riddles 
still involved in the relationship of nature to spiritual 
life cannot shake this fundamental conviction; if it 
does not, then it is folly to speak of man's greatness and 
dignity, or expect him to achieve new tasks. 

We must, however, insist most emphatically that the 
superiority ascribed to spirit need in no wise involve a 



158 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

disparagement of nature, either in our views of the world 
or in the practical work of life. The only thing which 
we must energetically resist as tending to reduce life's 
energy is a confusion of spirit with nature which mixes 
up the two ideas and believes it quite possible and easy 
to transmute mere natural impulses into spiritual values. 
To unravel this confusion satisfactorily, we must first 
of all distinguish clearly between nature and spirit, 
so that each stage may define itself clearly. But when 
we have once assured the superiority of spirit, it is 
well that we should return to nature. For without it, 
man cannot find his own perfection. He must appro- 
priate nature in order to develop the needful life-force. 
If we wish to see how that which at first seems purely 
sensory can yet, when transplanted into the soul, work 
for the furtherance of spirit and the ennoblement of life, 
we shall find irresistibly convincing evidence in the 
observation of art with its wealth of creative production. 
Art, while giving us, to use Goethe's words, the most 
blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of existence, 
strengthens at the same time our conviction that, in 
spite of all the complications of existence, spirit and 
nature do not, in last resort, fall asunder, but constitute 
one cosmos under the rule of spirit. Corresponding to 
this rule of the spirit, there must be a religion of the 
spirit. 

3. On scarcely any point does modern thought come 
into such harsh collision with traditional Christianity 
as in regard to the problem of redemption. We are so 
full of the consciousness of our own strength that we 
can hardly even tolerate the conception. Just when 
our closer union in the fellowship of work makes us 
stronger and more effective than ever we were and we 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 159 

find ourselves ever pressing on to new heights, why should 
we despair of our own powers and invoke outside help ? 
Why not stand upright, instead of bending the knee 
and craving as a boon what our own manly courage can 
secure for us ? This change of mood brings out very 
clearly the wide gulf between an age that is old and weary 
and one that is full of youthful aspiration. We should 
ask ourselves, however, whether such an explanation is 
exhaustive and whether there is not a permanent prob- 
lem which is independent of time's changes, a problem 
which may alter as regards detail but can never per- 
manently disappear. 

Undoubtedly there is much in the old way of con- 
ceiving redemption which savours of old-world weakness 
and weariness, and cannot be adopted by the man of to- 
day unless he be disloyal to himself. We must not 
indeed forget that even the older conception has its 
harsher and milder forms. When the harsher form tells 
us that man is totally depraved and abandoned, and 
can be redeemed only through supernatural grace 
without any co-operation on his own part, then it is 
scarcely possible to regard him as being one and the 
same person after the change as he was before it. Life 
loses all inner connexion and falls into detached frag- 
ments. In this case the crucial turning-point may very 
well appear as the removal of a load which oppresses 
man, as pardon and reconciliation, rather than as a 
renewal and uplifting of life. This may tranquillise 
us, but tranquillity is not power, and without power life 
cannot advance. 

But whatever evils are involved in this conception 
are for the most part very much mitigated when brought 
into contact with the realities of life. There some place 



160 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

has always been recovered for man's own working. The 
very consciousness of being lifted above his own weak- 
ness and uncertainty and being supported and guided 
entirely by divine power has often, as history bears 
witness, been the means of unloosing man's highest 
energies. The reformed Church, in particular, with its 
doctrine of predestination, shows us how possible it is 
for a contradiction in thought to remain when in life it 
has been already transcended. 

It cannot, however, be denied that the traditional way 
of conceiving redemption favours a too passive and often 
too anthropomorphic kind of religion. It leaves divine 
and human too harshly opposed ; the negative element 
in it is apt to outweigh the positive. There is also a 
danger that, if carried out with perfect consistency and 
sincerity, it may sap our courage in dealing with life, 
while, if taken less strictly and echoed mechanically 
as a kind of formula, it may give rise to inward insin- 
cerity. Is not pietistic thought, for instance, simply 
fostering insincerity when it seeks to awaken a conscious- 
ness of sin in the child ? Or again when it demands from 
a young progressive age the confession of man's com- 
plete nothingness and worthlessness ? The fundamental 
error in this is that convictions and feelings which should 
be the fruit of personal experience and the culmination 
of life's work are imposed upon life at the outset, and 
that man's limitations and incapacity are pressed home 
on him before the strength and courage to face life have 
been awakened. 

But we must ask ourselves whether, in spite of all 
such dangers, there is not in the idea of redemption an 
abiding and necessary truth, — the truth, namely, 
that genuinely spiritual activity is never the work of the 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 161 

mere isolated individual, and that the more his life, 
and that of humanity generally, shares in the intricacies 
of the spiritual life, the more it shapes itself into a 
struggle for the winning of a soul, so much the more 
clearly does he realise the living presence of a higher 
power and feel that it is sustaining and guiding him. 
Nor is this experience gained through a mere deepening 
of contemplative insight. The old nature must be broken 
up and the soul raised to heights not reached before. 
It is just when the divine is not poured into the human 
like some element from outside, but is understood as an 
awakening of the soul's most intimate being, that it stands 
furthest from the merely human level with its restricted 
capacities and aims, and is even strongly opposed to it. 
A conviction of this kind, for which our whole enquiry 
has stood sponsor, is in no way shaken by the experiences 
of modern days, but rather confirmed and strengthened 
by them. It is true that our age has developed a wide 
range of powers and achieved results through the exer- 
cise of man's own capacity, in deliberate rejection of 
all wider connexions. To this extent modern life has 
been a new struggle of the Titans, an attack of humanity 
on the Godhead. But a closer examination showed us 
that all this capacity of man is exercised along one par- 
ticular line and involves an inward limitation, that it 
falls into error if once it oversteps this limit and that, 
in laying claim to finality and completeness, it drags 
life down to a lamentably low level. It is true that men 
have become of late more closely united in their work, 
but this union has been far from engendering a harmony 
of souls and a common world of ideas. While outwardly 
men are being pressed more closely together, they are 
inwardly falling ever farther asunder. The conditions 

M 



162 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

and circumstances of life have undergone a tremendous 
expansion, but in spite of all the advance in wealth, 
mobility, and enjoyment, life has not gained any inde- 
pendent content and any joy in its own existence. 
The contrast of outward wealth with inward poverty 
has made the void all the more keenly felt, and engen- 
dered a growing discomfort. The life-tide has risen 
incessantly and its pace grown ever swifter. But if 
there is nothing to counterbalance the movement, if there 
is no superior power at work changing the mere sequence 
and succession into a time-embracing present, if life is 
devoid of all spiritual self-immediacy, then it loses all 
inward coherence and we become creatures of the moment, 
dependent on the moment and perishing with the mo- 
ment. All this is continually destroying the spirit- 
ual character of life and forcing us amid all our suc- 
cesses to struggle for the preservation of the soul. It 
is also fostering a growing desire for a life that is more 
than mere devotion to toil and temporal interests, a 
life which draws from the inward and the eternal. But 
wherever such a desire grows strong, man is no longer 
quite so certain of his divinity, and the power of a life 
at work within him is ever impelling him beyond his 
limitations and urging him to seek deeper sources of 
life. It becomes clear that humanity is too small when 
it wishes to be sufficient unto itself. And this means a 
reappearance of the problems which lie at the root of the 
idea of redemption. 

4. The time has gone by in which all attempts to 
dispute Christianity came to grief on the adamantine 
rock of Christian morality. Modern thought, as we have 
seen, has levelled its very sharpest attacks upon the 
dominating position which Christianity assigns to 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 163 

morality and the particular way in which it has con- 
ceived of morality. As regards the reproach of soft- 
ness and mildness, we must certainly allow that this 
quality cannot possibly supply all life's ethical needs, 
and has therefore at all times required supplementing 
even within Christianity itself. Otherwise it would have 
been impossible to uphold any state organisation, im- 
possible also to oppose any resistance to destructive 
powers. But to say that the specifically Christian 
morality cannot be everything does not prove it to be 
inferior and superfluous, or even refute its claim to as- 
sume the direction of life. In so far as ethical valuations 
come in at all, in contradistinction from mere natural 
process, the question centres mainly round the opposi- 
tion of justice and love. We cannot do without justice ; 
but that justice may not have the final word is clearly 
shown even in classical antiquity where it attained its 
maximum development. For its fundamental idea, that 
the treatment and status of men should be in accordance 
with their achievement, is, really, the life-philos- 
ophy of the strong and fortunate. The weaker are 
ground down callously under the wheel of fate. A 
measureless love, a cherishing and fostering of the small 
and tender, a "reverence for that which lies beneath us" 
(Goethe) has no place here. We are simply members 
of a closed system : our achievement is the measure of 
our fate which cannot be altered. In Christianity quite 
other influences come into play. To reproach it with 
having glorified weakness and smallness as such must 
be due either to gross misunderstanding or to culpable 
superficiality. The real truth which Christianity has 
brought out is that what seems outwardly small and weak 
may quite well possess an inward greatness. It has 



1 64 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

discovered greatness in that which is small, and thereby 
changed all the standards of life. And at the same time 
it has broken down all rigid barriers between small and 
great. No longer measuring man by man, i.e. the 
finite by the finite, as the ancients did, but using the 
infinity and perfection of divine life as the standard 
of measurement, it has made all differences sink into 
insignificance in face of the common experience of the 
insufficiency of all human achievement. Great though 
those differences might seem when measured by human 
standards, they shrank into narrow compass when 
placed over against infinity. It was only when all 
man's error and guilt failed to hinder the working of 
a divine life in the soul that a measureless love, — 
baseless according to human ideas, — could reach out to 
all human beings and become a mighty impelling force 
leading to an inner uplifting of life. 

It is through convulsive upheavals and the sorrow 
and death of many noble men that life-forces such as 
these have forced their way upwards. And now come 
the shallow-minded apostles of negation, making a 
great outcry and declaring that the depths inaccessible 
to them are not there at all. They have no suspicion 
of the seriousness of the issue here at stake or of the 
grave loss and retrogression which the spread of negation 
involves. We cannot do without justice, but never can 
we be satisfied with mere justice. 

That history can show many instances of softness and 
mildness being displayed in the wrong place may be 
willingly conceded, but this is no argument against the 
quality as such. We on our side are equally insistent 
that life should recognise justice and bring it into the 
right relationship with love, but in the exercise of justice 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 165 

we never dare lose sight of the fact that all justice as 
administered by man yields but a partial and particular 
and indeed very problematic view of life, and that 
human life inevitably becomes stiff and soulless if it 
does not in last resort appeal from justice to love. Not 
only do general considerations prove this, but the needs 
of the present day demand it. For the modern mind 
is keenly alive to the incompleteness of human existence, 
the saturation of all our effort with great contradictions, 
the clashing of a desire for infinity with the limited 
character of our capacity. It is only by indulging in 
self-contradiction that it could accept the old closed 
system with its corresponding ideal of justice, and drive 
love from the guidance of human destinies. The modern 
humanitarian tendency, to which we owe so much, also 
points in this same direction of love. It can hardly 
avoid the dangers of sentimentalism, dissipation, and ef- 
feminacy if it loses touch with those depths of life 
which Christianity has opened up. 

The problem of justice and love, however, is not a mere 
question of temper and feeling : it extends into the very 
substance of life and work. We saw that in all spiritual 
activity the objective fact acquired an independent 
status over against the opinions, moods, and aims of the 
subject. Here it has a right which it must maintain 
and insist upon resolutely. It dare not allow any abate- 
ment of it in favour of human weakness and caprice. 
It is only on such a soil that civilisation can grow and 
constitute itself a spiritual possession for mankind. 
To this extent justice is here also the presupposition of 
all success. It is through recognising the right of the 
objective world that man first finds an inward anchorage 
and some sure indication of how to direct his conduct. 



166 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

But we saw how this separation and opposition of man 
and objective fact, this stage of justice, was over- 
taken and transcended by spiritual creation, and how 
the fact was thus absorbed into life which itself became 
wider in the process, — soul and fact interacting fruit- 
fully with each other and each strengthening the other. 
Thus life was lifted to a level which we may call love, 
since on this level all sense of foreignness is banished, 
and inward unity and stability are acquired at the same 
time as freedom and joy. It is only at this height that 
it becomes possible to weed out all egoism and at the 
same time produce a positive temper of life, an affirmative 
attitude concerning it, since in truth a thorough con- 
quest of egoism can never be brought about either 
through argument or resignation, but only through the 
creation of a new life. Thus the Christian ideal of love 
contains also a cultural ideal, even though it be indicated 
rather than realised; and the augmented life thus 
demanded is of an incomparably stronger and more 
fruitful type than that of Eastern Asiatic philosophy, 
— admirable though this be in its way, — with its 
reduction of life to quiet contemplation and absorp- 
tion into eternal Being. Love then must be in the 
first instance creative and not merely passive. 

But there has been a still stronger tendency of our 
time running counter not only to the specifically Chris- 
tian way of conceiving morality but to the prominence 
of morality altogether, and even to awarding it any 
independent significance. Morality was regarded very 
largely as a mere means for securing ends foreign to 
itself, or else as a phenomenon attendant on another 
order of event. The former was the case when all 
cosmic concepts and the whole of life were under the 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 167 

domination of nature, while what had hitherto been 
called morality was subservient merely to natural 
self-preservation ; the latter alternative prevailed in the 
case of those beliefs and doctrines which changed all 
reality into a thought-process advancing steadily in 
accordance with an inward necessity, morality in this 
case being nothing more than the surrender of the 
individual to this all-authoritative process. In both 
cases alike there was no question of building up a world 
of moral personality; in both cases the mere unfolding 
of power took the place of personal deed. This joint 
attack is all the more dangerous for Christianity, inas- 
much as Christian morality in its traditional form is 
certainly not devoid of weaknesses. It does not do 
sufficient justice to the natural element in our life, the 
wide extent of mechanism, the resistance to freedom 
generally. It fastens the burden of guilt too heavily 
on individual souls. Moreover, it is not sufficiently 
concerned with making the inner emotion outwardly 
effective and carrying the moral movement beyond the 
feeling and temper of the individual into the very sub- 
stance of life. This again goes closely with the fact that 
morality is regarded too much as a separate department 
which does not touch other departments such as science 
and art, whereas in truth the moral problem runs all 
through life and holds up a high imperative standard 
to all departments alike. Thus it is a somewhat dan- 
gerous mistake to make the formation of a good char- 
acter the direct goal of life and conduct, as this goal 
should be sought rather in the growth of a spiritual 
energy, a growth which does however involve the 
moral ascent as a primary condition. Throughout we 
must regard the traditional state of Christian morality 



1 68 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

not as something finished and final, but as still in the 
making. 

This, however, we are well entitled to do, since the 
fundamental truth of morality, as we see it emerging 
in Christianity and becoming a power in the world's 
history, is secure and independent of all strife as to the 
manner of realising it and of all the changes which time 
brings. It could be contested only when erroneous 
conceptions were substituted and the conditions of 
genuine morality were misjudged. Morality demands 
emancipation from the petty finite self. This seems a 
strange Utopian dream, so long as our existence is a mere 
juxtaposition of conflicting elements ; it is no Utopia, 
however, when we recognise a life that is rooted in the 
whole and the possibility of transplanting man into 
that wider existence. Morality demands a power of 
independent choice, a basing of life on personal deed. 
This of course is absurd so long as we men are fragments 
of a single given and finite world. It becomes perfectly 
intelligible, however, so soon as we recognise that we are 
the meeting-ground of different world-levels which 
require us to choose between them, so that our life 
is full of great possibilities, challenges, and adventures, 
as we have already shown in greater detail. That moral- 
ity counted its goal as superior to all others and its 
values as incomparably the most important is a piece 
of bold presumption so long as moral tasks seem to lie 
in the same plane as all others; but this contention 
proves itself fully justified and even inevitable when once 
the conviction strikes home that morality is concerned 
with raising the whole level of life. 

Our conceptions of morality must be large enough: 
in particular we must continually bear in mind that we 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 169 

are not dealing here with isolated resolves belonging to 
the passing moment, but with decisions which affect 
the whole trend and direction of life, decisions which 
penetrate and form our being, which have to be con- 
tinually renewed and maintained against all debasing 
influences. In last resort the question resolves itself 
into this : Whether life is simply a process that takes 
place in us, or whether we can transmute it into our own 
deed. In the former case, despite all its apparent near- 
ness it remains obscure and inwardly alien to us. It is 
only if the latter alternative be true that it can become 
in the full sense of the word our own life and thus receive 
an illumination from within. In the one case, soul and 
content are lacking, however busy and gay life may seem 
on the surface ; in the other, they are most intimately 
one with it. Thus the fundamental idea of a spiritual 
immediacy in life, on which in last resort all spirituality 
hinges, can only be realised with the help of morality, 
and further it is only with the help of morality that life 
can be transfigured into freedom. 

It is, therefore, a great thing that Christianity should so 
strenuously have pressed home upon the recognition 
of the world the supreme importance of morality. This 
it has done and still continues to do. More than any 
other religion it has lifted morality to a position of su- 
preme power in the universe. It has made moral problems 
the very centre of the world's happenings ; it has invested 
them with tremendous seriousness. If it has not actu- 
ally disclosed ultimate depths of reality, it has at least 
given us some hint of them. It has moved heaven and 
earth in order to save a soul for man. To the lifework 
of each individual, however insignificant it may seem 
outwardly, it has given a meaning and value which reach 



170 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

right into the infinite and the eternal. And just as 
Christianity, at its very outset, gave man by these 
means something great to work for and courage and 
strength for the task of life, so too the philosophical 
morality of modern times has drawn steadily upon this 
original source. In fact, had it not been quickened and 
warmed there, its idea of duty would have remained 
formal and powerless. As for the present moment, it 
stands in most urgent need of a strong moral force where- 
with to meet its perplexities and problems, — that it 
may rise to the level of spiritual creativeness, vanquish 
base self-seeking, protect itself against the epicureanism 
which threatens it, and give life a spiritual independence. 
Can anything well be more perverse in a time so full of 
problems than to bend one's energies to lowering the 
status of morality and with it the great world-power of 
Christianity in which it is rooted ? 

5. The problem of our position with regard to Chris- 
tianity reaches its highest pitch of interest when we ask 
ourselves what attitude we are to adopt towards the 
central doctrine of Christianity, viz. the incarnation of 
God in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for the re- 
demption of man from the burden of God's wrath. 
We saw how the desire for one single, all-controlling, 
fundamental truth, — a desire deep-rooted in all well- 
defined religions, — found in this doctrine a magnificent 
fulfilment, how the union here effected of temporal and 
supra-temporal history, of human and divine nature, 
introduced unfathomable depths into human existence 
and invested them with a spiritual nearness and intimacy. 
And finally we saw how with relentless logic that central 
doctrine impelled the formation of a rigidly stereotyped 
world of ideas and made them part of the settled con- 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 171 

viction of the faithful. But we have also convinced 
ourselves that the modern world has raised most emphatic 
protest against every single one of these points as well 
as against the whole general position. Not only has it 
cast most serious doubt upon the foundation of this 
fundamental truth; it has not even been satisfied with 
its content. The union of God and man in one person, 
the idea of a vicarious sacrifice and generally of the 
office of mediator, as well as all those doctrines which 
subserve the development of the main position, — 
doctrines of the only begotten Son, the virgin birth, the 
descent into hell, the resurrection, and the ascension, 
the sitting at the right hand of God, and the judgment to 
come ; that is to say, the whole of the second clause of 
the creed, comprising the doctrines which are really 
distinctive of Christianity, — all this has now become 
the subject of doubt, denial, and conflict. 

We strove to surmount the opposition by keeping our 
eyes steadily fixed upon the problem of life and the 
position of religion in the whole of man's mental economy. 
We found that human life as a whole involves a tremen- 
dous task, a task which cannot be solved without recourse 
to religion. Religion, as we saw, has not only, as being 
universal, to establish and deepen the whole range of 
spiritual work ; it must also open up, in opposition to 
this, the new stage of a world-transcending spiritual 
freedom. From this point of view it was easy to ensure 
a ready understanding of the problems of historical 
Christianity and full appreciation of the deep basic 
emotions which penetrate and inspire it, but so far are 
we from effecting an adjustment with its dogmatic 
teaching that our antagonism to it is rather increased. 
For hitherto the objections urged against it came rather 



172 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

from the general organised body of spiritual life ; but now 
they originate in the sphere of religion itself and are 
couched in this form : that, in Christian dogmatic 
teaching, necessary and fundamental truths, on which 
our whole life depends, are wedded to a specific mode of 
conceiving them, which we can no longer tolerate, that 
consequently a frightful discord is engendered in our 
soul, and that through this union of necessary truths 
with problematic, the former suffer serious injury, 
if not in themselves, yet certainly in their effect upon 
man. The convictions we have already expressed make 
it sufficiently clear that we can no longer limit the con- 
nexion between the human nature and the divine to 
one single instance, allowing it to extend to others 
only through this intermediate link. Our religious 
conviction compels us to demand an immediate rela- 
tionship of divine and human through the whole extent 
of the spiritual life. Nor can we make the divine love 
and grace depend on the one manifestation of it in Jesus 
Christ. The imaginative conceptions, moreover, which 
support the whole edifice of Christian dogma, — par- 
ticularly that of the wrath of God only to be appeased 
through the blood of His son, — we are bound to reject 
as far too anthropomorphic and irreconcilable with our 
purer conceptions of the Godhead. And we are the 
more bound to reject them in proportion as we find that 
they involve a problem as necessary as it is difficult : 
the problem, namely, of the relationship of justice and 
love, moral zeal and pardoning tenderness, both in the 
cosmic scheme and in human life. But the more impor- 
tant we consider this problem to be, the more impossible 
does it become to hold to a solution which is inwardly 
foreign to us and has even become offensive. We are 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 173 

constrained even on religious grounds to press on towards 
a resolute expulsion of all doctrines which confuse human 
and divine in the picture of the personality of Jesus. 
Nor is our resistance on this point confined to the old, 
in itself consistent, doctrine of the God-man ; it is directed 
also against the modern halfway position which drops 
the old doctrine, but nevertheless calls Jesus uncondi- 
tionally lord and master and must consequently bind our 
whole religious life indissolubly to him, thus taking away 
all independence with regard to him, and robbing our 
own life of its full originative power. Nor is it indi- 
viduals only who suffer from this conception ; the whole 
of Christianity is affected by it. For Christianity now 
seems to be completely bound down to this one point, 
and to be incapable of anything more than holding fast 
to the truth as it was realised in Jesus. As a result of 
becoming thus stereotyped and limited it cannot pos- 
sibly penetrate the whole fabric of history, renew its 
youth ever and again, enter into the life of the different 
periods and ennoble them each along its own special 
line. It does not become a continuous work in which 
we all have a share, as it must be if it is to serve as a real 
stimulus. Moreover, any change effected by historical 
criticism in our conception of Jesus will be certain to 
act detrimentally upon Christianity in general. These 
points amply prove that the opposition to the traditional 
conception of Christianity does not originate only from 
without, but may spring up in the bosom of religion 
itself. Opposition of this latter kind is particularly 
dangerous, for it makes what would otherwise be a mere 
intellectual statement into a sacred duty, an ethical 
demand. 
But the more we admit all this and the more resolutely 



174 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

we oppose all weak attempts at compromise, the more 
pressing does the question become whether our own con- 
viction does not lack concreteness and is not dependent 
on the fluctuations of opinion and inclination. And with 
this comes the further question whether, with the 
abandonment of concrete historical fact as fixed by 
dogma, we do not lose all touch with the essence of 
Christianity. 

Both questions point back to the problem of what we 
are to understand by fact in the domain of the spiritual 
life and especially in that of religion. Facts here cannot 
be occurrences which come to us from without, but all 
genuine fact must pertain to the inward life, and even 
what transpires in the inward life does not yield full 
assurance in its character as a single experience, since 
all single experiences are capable of being placed in differ- 
ent contexts and therewith interpreted differently. 
The assurance belongs only to movements and events 
as wholes, as totalities which support all single experi- 
ences and do not admit of being interpreted from without, 
but supply their own sufficient explanation. 

That such movements are present in us as totalities 
and appoint us the task of advancing from whole to 
whole was the main result which we obtained from our 
survey of human life. Indeed, all sets of facts con- 
centrated themselves, we found, into the one main and 
fundamental fact of an inner life becoming independent, 
the appearance of a new stage of reality in our midst. 
This fact as a totality showed, however, that it contained 
and implied a wider movement, a further ascent, which 
towers far above all that individual opinion and inter- 
pretation may be capable of. This fundamental fact 
of the spiritual life proved itself to be a historic world- 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 175 

power, originator of all that lifts man essentially above 
the level of the mere beast, and building up, in the form 
of the spiritual culture, a great connected scheme of life. 
But it also made its presence directly felt in the soul of 
each individual, for everybody was confronted with the 
task of winning a spiritual self, grasping and developing 
the spiritual life just where he happened to be, becoming 
a spiritual force. That what constitutes the heart of 
the cosmic process can thus at the same time be the 
immediate experience of each individual and a task 
which compels fulfilment, gives our root-conviction 
both certainty and spiritual nearness ; it sets life on a 
firm basis and secures it against all doubt. Everything 
that tradition and environment bring to us must be 
related to this spiritual fact ; by this must it be illumined 
and vitalised. This alone supplies the standard which 
enables us to measure how much of the old material has 
a permanent value for life, and how much of it is bound 
up with the conditions of a particular age and must 
perish with them. From such a measurement even the 
complex structure of traditional Christianity cannot 
escape; only from this starting-point can its truth-con- 
tent be clearly elucidated so that it may develop freely 
and become fully effective. 

If we are once thus convinced that the facts which are 
decisive for religion are not merely adjacent to life but 
inherent in it, that they do not come to the soul from 
without but rise out of it, won by the self through con- 
crete action, then in this shifting of concrete actuality 
from the seen to the unseen world we are liable to the 
reproach of allowing all that is solid and substantial to 
evaporate away. But this reproach we fling back again 
and appeal to all history as witness. For the course of 



176 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

history has seen life's centre of gravity shifted ever more 
and more from the outer to the inner, from the seen to 
the unseen, — has been tending more and more to put 
thought- values before the things that can be grasped by 
the senses, thus setting the sense-world itself in a new 
light. In this movement religion plays a particularly 
energetic part. Every step of real religious advance 
was marked by a further subdual of the sensible to the 
non-sensible world. This was the line pursued by 
Christianity itself and followed up in its later history. 
To the laggard who remained at an earlier stage the 
newer development was bound to appear as destructive 
and dissolvent in character, just as early Christianity 
was often charged with atheism, and even to-day many 
Catholics are unwilling to allow that the less tangible 
religion of the Protestants is a religion at all. But it is 
always the progressives and not the laggards who set 
the standard. Thus it is quite in accordance with the 
whole trend of historical development when we demand 
a further advance from seen to unseen and wish to have 
true reality still more sharply distinguished from what is 
palpable to the senses. 

But it is another question whether this further advance 
is in keeping with Christianity as presented to us, or 
whether we are not breaking with it completely. Doubt- 
less we should be doing so were it not for the fact that 
even historical Christianity is much more than its 
dogmatic setting. That setting was in truth only an 
embodiment, indispensable, it is true, but never constitut- 
ing the whole of life, and justifiable only as being an 
expression of the soul. Christianity existed before that 
particular embodiment took shape and has at all times 
unfolded a life which transcended it and was independent 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 177 

of it. For the soul of Christianity was always some- 
thing more simple and immediate : it was the immediate 
relationship of the soul to God with all the upheavals 
and upliftings which arose out of estrangement and 
reunion. If in its outward embodiment Christianity 
was ever inclining to greater elaboration and complexity, 
immediate Christian experience was equally desirous of 
a radical simplification, an unaffected humanity and 
a closeness of inward communion. This was always 
the case when the religious life showed any fresh mani- 
festation of rejuvenating power, even when this happened 
within the Catholic Church, as in the case of Francis of 
Assisi and Thomas a Kempis. It was true, moreover, in 
all mysticism, in so far as this relates not to Christ but 
directly to God. And it holds good on all high levels 
of religious life : in religion also the simple thing is that 
which is great and truly needful. If we consider the 
confessions of a man like Augustine or read Pascal's 
thoughts on religion, what is it all about if not the 
immediate relationship of the soul to God and the 
preservation of the soul amid violent opposition? 
"God and the soul would I fain know. — Nothing 
more? — Nothing more," so thinks Augustine. It is 
therefore no disloyalty to Christianity, the religion of the 
spirit, if we count the events that happen within the spir- 
itual life as supreme in importance and treat them 
accordingly. 

But this does not mean that we fail to recognise the 
need of a considerable development in the situation as 
handed down to us. In earlier times, the inward events 
of life submitted uncritically to the presence of the 
outward embodiment alongside of them, and never came 
into collision with it, often indeed finding in it a very 

N 



178 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

desirable supplement. To-day, however, we have ar- 
rived at the consciousness of a contradiction between the 
soul and its embodiment, and this not as the result of 
a passing mood, but as part of the total development of 
our time. We are now concerned with the alternative 
whether the body shall enchain the soul or the soul 
transform the body. Even if the soul is victorious, it 
will have to seek a fresh embodiment, but in doing so 
it will be guided not by the tradition of past ages, but 
by the actual needs of our present stage of development. 
The soul-element will be able to assert its claim all the 
more successfully in proportion as life becomes more 
closely concentrated into a whole and superior to the 
individuals who compose it. And it does become thus 
superior according to the conception of spiritual life 
here presented. 

It would be far outstepping the limits of our present 
enquiry if we were to view the separate doctrines of 
dogmatic Christianity from this standpoint and distin- 
guish their permanent truth-content from their perish- 
able setting. Here we may simply note in brief that 
even on our view the personality of Jesus, the man 
Jesus, is in no wise robbed of its pre-eminent signifi- 
cance, nor is his status lowered to that of a mere teacher 
of wisdom. All spiritual creation, — all creation that 
ennobles and renews, — is the work of some few indi- 
viduals, as compared with whom the rest are mere 
assistants or even a mere ring of spectators. The crea- 
tion in question was possible only because the person- 
ality itself was seeking in it its own primal nature, 
struggling, in its work, for a spiritual self-preservation, 
and carrying the struggle victoriously through. We 
saw how, in such upward wrestling, creative personalities 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 179 

felt that they were not resting on their own strength, 
but were impelled by divine power, and how they inter- 
preted all the result of their efforts as a revelation of that 
power. If greatness be so rare, and the consciousness 
of dependence in greatness so well-marked in the sepa- 
rate departments of spiritual work, the same thing holds 
still more truly where, as in religion, the character of the 
whole life is in question. The appearance of the new 
here seems more completely spontaneous ; it proclaims 
a still sharper break with the old, a dropping of old 
connexions, the existence of an independent life-source. 
At the same time, the consciousness of dependence on a 
higher power now rises to the height of a soul-com- 
munion with God. As change and miracle are here so 
much greater, creative personalities are proportionately 
fewer. The whole of the world's history revolves round 
some few of these. Why Jesus occupies among them a 
unique position and a particularly high place we do not 
here need to discuss. 

We should like, however, to call attention to the fact 
that it is precisely our conviction of what is essential 
and valuable in a creative personality which makes us 
more capable of withstanding the doubts raised by 
historical criticism than are those to whom the dogmatic 
position of Jesus is the one all-important matter. For 
it can scarcely be disputed that the way in which the 
position is conceived does not really reproduce the con- 
viction of Jesus himself, but is due rather to the reverence 
of the ages which succeeded him. On the other hand, 
the thoroughly unique mould of life which we find in 
Jesus could not possibly have been a later fabrication 
or a cunning piece of patchwork. Here we are offered 
a substantial fact which admits of no doubt. 



180 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

But, it may be asked, is there not in every well- 
defined individuality an inward limitation? Can any 
individuality, marked with its own particular quality, 
retain its influence always and for ever? Certainly 
not, in the sense of imposing its particular quality upon 
everyone. Where the " Imitation of Christ" has been 
understood in this sense, it has given rise to much error 
and confusion. But, qua spiritual, such a creative per- 
sonality is more than accidental and particular. It 
contains an element of permanence and eternal youth 
in so far as it lifts the problem to a height hitherto 
undreamt of, transplants us into a new world, and, 
through the full surrender of its nature to one all-con- 
trolling task, exercises an irresistible power of stimulus 
and inspiration. The realisation of this can become to 
us also a mighty impelling force and a fountain of new 
life. We can mould, enrich, and uplift ourselves thereby 
without ever losing the originality of our own life and 
impairing our own distinctive character. For here there 
is no question of accepting slavishly whatever comes to 
us, or bending beneath an alien yoke, but rather of 
arousing and winning our most intimate spiritual nature 
at the same time that we gain access to a world which 
knows no change of time and no hostile schism of 
individuals. 

6. We have touched repeatedly on the problem of 
the Church and convinced ourselves that, in spite of all 
defects and imperfections, a religious community is 
nevertheless indispensable. Christianity, moreover, 
must find such a community particularly essential and 
valuable, since, with more than ordinary boldness, it 
builds up a new world over against the world as given, 
and instead of looking upon the kindgom of God as 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 181 

a far-distant goal seeks to bring it right into human 
existence. The greatness of the design was, as usually 
happens, on a par with the greatness of the complica- 
tions and dangers involved. There arose an incessant 
struggle not only with outside foes, but in the bosom of 
Christianity itself; and the conflict over the relation- 
ship between Church and personality elicited, in the 
Reformation, the greatest cleavage known to the history 
of Christendom. 

But since we are looking forwards, not backwards, 
we have to deal here with those questions only which 
are thrust upon us by the present state of affairs and its 
estrangement of religion and culture. Under the in- 
fluence of this estrangement, church life to-day is divid- 
ing up into two opposing movements. On the one hand, 
there is the endeavour to keep culture under the sway 
of religion, to allow only such parts of it as conform to 
the ecclesiastical thought-world and to reject as decadent 
and erroneous everything which goes along other lines. 
But if great changes are really involved in the progress 
of the centuries, — and we satisfied ourselves that such 
was the case, — then a procedure of this kind must act 
harshly and oppressively and bring about a spiritual 
stagnation. The encyclicals against modernists and the 
anti-modernist oath show very clearly whither this path 
is leading. On the other hand, there is an effort on 
the part of many Protestants to escape complications by 
separating religion as far as possible from culture, and 
assigning it an independent sphere. But religion is 
thus apt to become a mere subjective emotional excite- 
ment, whose highly strung sentiment cannot conceal 
its lack of spiritual substance, while it possesses no 
motive which would lead it to form a community. In 



182 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

this way, religion is indeed out of danger and secure 
from any conflict with culture, but at the same time it 
cannot bring us anything essentially new; it loses its 
power of enlisting recruits and is necessarily liable to 
the greatest danger which can befall religion, — the 
danger of being regarded with indifference. Thus the 
modern attitude toward the Church fluctuates between 
a bitter resentment of its oppressiveness and a complete 
indifference. Small wonder is it that the average person 
tends on the whole to fight shy of it. 

But impossible though it is either to explain away or to 
minimise the fact of a widespread antipathy to the 
Church, yet it is open to question whether this feeling 
is more than surface deep. Does it really reach down 
to life's depths, or is there not rather an intense longing 
growing up there for a religious community, though it be 
one that may arise in opposition to the existing churches ? 
We saw that in proportion as modern life develops 
its distinctive character, its limitations become more 
strongly emphasised and therewith its need for some 
completing factor, a need which seems to call impera- 
tively for a union of men under the banner of 
religion. The more powerful the attraction of the ex- 
ternal world and the more compelling its hold upon us, 
the greater becomes our longing for a strengthening of 
the inner life by a union of kindred souls in some sort 
of outward organisation. When the hurry of work 
keeps life in bondage to the moment and makes us forget 
the present in our anxiety about the future, it becomes 
all the more necessary to secure some position of per- 
manence and a present which transcends time. This, 
however, requires that we should found an order which 
stands for the abiding truth in our common life as op- 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 183 

posed to the changes of time. When we consider 
further how the natural struggle for existence becomes 
intensified in social intercourse till it assumes the form 
of implacable competition, how modern life leaves man 
ever lonelier despite the expanding wealth of his outer 
relations, and how the pursuit of power and enjoyment 
together with a calculating utilitarianism suppress all 
care for inward riches and their intrinsic value, — when 
we consider, moreover, how our inner life suffers from 
all this, then it becomes very easily intelligible that 
deeper souls should be seized with a desire for the for- 
mation of a society which treats the problems of the 
inward life as an end in themselves and withstands the 
attempt to regard them as external ; in this, however, 
not opposing the phase now reached in the historical 
development of the spiritual life but rather acting har- 
moniously with it. In the development of such a society 
there is no need for religion and culture to become 
estranged or divided, provided only that a common 
spiritual life embrace them both, and that in regard to 
both we make clearer distinctions, — distinguishing 
more clearly, in the case of religion, between spiritual 
substance and the form in which man may appropriate 
it, and, in the case of culture, between spiritual culture 
and humanistic culture. Let us here give a few in- 
dications as to how the religious community may 
recognise both religion and culture and endeavour to 
effect an understanding between them, itself winning 
great significance in the process. 

Religion must not become in the community a means 
to other ends, such as political power or social well- 
being; for this might easily mean a loss of its most 
essential qualities, namely, inwardness and superiority 



i8 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

to the world. But to recognise religion as an end 
in itself does not mean separating it from life and making 
it into a doctrine of the other world. He who under- 
stands it from the point of view of life as a whole will 
rather seek its task here and now, will above all expect 
it to strengthen, ennoble, and uplift human existence. 
This, however, it cannot do unless it enter courageously 
into the life of the age and concern itself seriously with 
its needs and sorrows. It is not that we must abandon 
ourselves to the things of this world, but rather reach a 
loftier point of view whence we may discover more in it, 
make it more progressive, see it and deal with it in the 
light of larger contexts. " Among men must we seek 
God." All present-day problems which concern man as 
a whole must stir the religious community also to activ- 
ity. Not to abandon the heights, but to bring them 
into closer connexion with the broad level of life, — 
that is our task ! Not to appraise the world too highly, 
but to lift its inward level and keep alive in it the 
sense of a transcendent life. Not to be the slaves of our 
time, but to interest ourselves more in its concerns and 
seek an Eternal within it ! 

Our time, indeed, is quite unique in character and is 
rich in unfathomable problems. Is it not strange, for 
instance, that young theologians should still be trained 
mainly along philological and historical lines just as the 
Reformation required of them, in necessary accordance 
with its conviction of the value of the Bible? All 
honour to the Bible, but is it right that the study of 
Hebrew, for example, should rank as more necessary 
than a thorough introduction to the social problems of 
the age? Is that phrase of Luther's, which was so 
striking and forceful in his day still applicable to ours, — 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 185 

that languages (i.e. foreign languages) are the sheath 
in which the sword of the spirit is encased? If the 
Church does not seek to come into close touch with the 
age, it need not be surprised if the age become indifferent 
to it. 

Just as we must seek to make our actions penetrate 
the world, so we must try also to bring our convictions 
into closer connexion with the life-process. The re- 
ligious community undoubtedly needs a thought- world 
of its own, sprung from religious soil. If it were to 
rivet this world indissolubly to the results attained in 
other departments, then it could not oppose any firm 
resistance to the movements of the day, and would 
easily be drawn now hither, now thither, by the surface 
currents of the age. A religious community which 
shirks all contradiction and never essays any vigorous 
criticism of its environment or initiates any aggressive 
policy in regard to it has forfeited the right to an in- 
dependent existence. 

On the other hand, we must weigh against this the 
fact that the witness of history and our own previous 
exposition both show us that religion, through opposi- 
tion to its environment, may fall into grievous embarrass- 
ment. The only way of meeting this difficulty is for the 
religious community to take its stand upon truths which 
belong directly to the life-process itself and do not 
arise in the first instance from metaphysical speculation 
or historical tradition, — truths, that is, which concern 
and maintain the facts of the appearance of a new world 
among men and the development of this world through 
conflict and upheaval, the facts of a basic, struggling, 
and triumphant spirituality. It is for the Church to 
uphold these central truths and bring them into the con- 



186 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

flict, courageous and confident of victory, sustained by 
the conviction that no peripheral event can shake the 
centre and that the actual development of a reality 
remains securely independent of all views as to its 
precise nature. Only truths of this kind can grow so 
intimately one with man's nature that their defence 
becomes to him a matter of spiritual self-preservation 
and therewith a matter of the utmost possible certainty. 
It is only in regard to such facts that the common ex- 
perience of the whole human race in the upbuilding of 
the spiritual life can become at the same time an im- 
mediate experience and task for each individual. More- 
over, these life-truths, while immutable as regards their 
fundamental content, yet allow of change in the mode 
of their formulation, and can thus enter into closer 
touch with the movement of the times. For when the 
superiority of the fundamental process to every mode of 
manifesting and presenting it is fully recognised, then 
the truth can be at one and the same time an adamantine 
fact and a task which must ever be approached anew. 
It is then possible to possess and yet to seek. The 
possession indeed requires the search, since the depth 
stirring within us is thus transformed into an ever fuller 
self-activity. The movement of the times may thus 
serve to give the time-transcending truth an ever more 
complete expression. All human conception of the divine 
truth is, in last resort, a symbol, and what really concerns 
us is that this symbol should be the fittest possible and 
that there should be no noticeable discrepancy between 
it and the truth it subserves. For once such discrepancy 
arises, life loses its coherence and the religious thought- 
world its certainty and convincingness. This mode 
of transcending oppositions, however, can be utilised 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 187 

only when fundamental life-truths and not traditional 
dogmas constitute the heart and essence of the world of 
thought. 

In last resort everything depends upon the question 
whether the religious community does really possess 
one and only one all-embracing truth which is indis- 
pensable to man's existence. The fact which is more 
than all else responsible for the shattering of ecclesiastical 
religion is that the truth which it once championed as 
fundamental, — that, namely, of the incarnation and the 
mediatorial office of Christ, — is no longer tenable in 
the present phase of our intellectual development, and 
that whatever new truth is struggling into the light has 
not yet acquired the wholeness and fixity belonging to 
a fact which transcends all subjective opinion. These 
qualities it must have as the main condition and re- 
quirement for a strengthening and rejuvenation of the 
religious community. They are, moreover, something 
which can quite easily be acquired, since one great all- 
embracing fact is really present in our life summoning 
us to incessant work. This fact is, as we saw, the ap- 
pearance of a new stage of reality, the opening-up of 
a life which draws from the universe as a whole. In 
making it our own, we are at the same time combining 
to build up among us a kingdom of the spirit. And if it 
be true that this task can be discharged only at the cost 
of opposition to the average level of human conditions 
and through the realisation of remoter depths, — if, 
therefore, it cannot really succeed without recourse to 
religion, — then the religious community does possess 
one supreme aim and at the same time a permanent 
value. However true it be, then, that the condition 
of our time requires us in the first instance to become in- 



188 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

dependent as regards the past, yet the more assured 
this independence becomes, the more possible is it to 
seek some understanding with the past and the more 
possible also for the contributions of different periods 
to become welded together into one common work. 

Summary 

Point by point it has been shown that the maintenance 
of Christianity requires considerable changes in its tra- 
ditional form. Religion must enter into closer touch 
with human activity and at the same time become a more 
powerful leaven in the world. The spiritual life must 
be more independent of man's character and condition, 
and must overcome within itself the opposition between 
personal and impersonal modes of conceiving it, which it 
can do only by advancing to an essentially higher level. 
In the idea of redemption the positive and renewing 
aspect must play a more important part. Christian 
morality must form the high level along which further 
progress is to be made. The central fact of religion must 
be shifted further back ; it must now be the upbuilding 
of a new life for man and for mankind, and must thus 
become more intimately related to the soul. Finally 
the Church must become a repository of the facts and 
tasks of life itself. Nor are these various demands 
unconnected, existing merely side by side. They are 
only different aspects of one requirement which runs 
through them all and they all point in the same direction, 
namely, this : that Christianity must work out the 
life it contains into a more independent form, and outline 
its world from the vantage-point thus gained. The 
important matter is the development of a Christianity 
more deeply rooted in the life-process itself and revealing 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 189 

itself in this process, a Christianity more original and 
more universal, more active and more manly. Such 
a Christianity does not come to us as an already com- 
pleted work ; it is a movement still in progress, a move- 
ment which calls for our personal co-operation and 
even makes us part-supporters of a new life. In the 
Christianity of the first centuries, concerned as it was 
with the introduction of a new world in opposition to 
one already in possession, the idea that each individual 
in his own station must carry on the common work by 
the exercise of his own activity possessed great hold over 
men and was a powerful spur to action. Origen ex- 
pressed this thought by saying that the true follower 
of Christ must not merely believe in Christ but be him- 
self a Christ, and serve the salvation of his brethren 
by his life and suffering. To-day again Christianity 
is absorbed in a great and perhaps still harder struggle. 
Again to-day it can only conquer on condition that it be 
treated as a continuous work in which all have a share ; 
its disciples must not merely accept it, but themselves 
help in its upbuilding. Our political experience teaches 
us that the interest in political life can be warm and 
vigorous only when the individual citizens take an active 
part in the whole regime and feel inwardly responsible 
for it. When they merely obey commands issued by 
a superior, they cannot feel any genuine interest. Sim- 
ilarly it is true for religion that we put forth our whole 
power of love and work only when we treat the matter as 
a concern of our own and, in championing it, are at the 
same time asserting ourselves. But how could religion 
as a whole become a matter of our own activity in any 
other way than that we have described, — by being 
shifted, that is to say, to life's inmost centre and 



i go CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

being understood as a demand for spiritual self-pres- 
ervation, self-preservation both of the individual and of 
the race ? 

Increase of activity involves also a growth in cer- 
tainty. For nothing can be more certain to us, nothing 
stand less in need of proof or outside support, than that 
which sets its impress upon our own life and first shapes 
it as spiritual life. The more firmly we become estab- 
lished in this life and thereby participate in a reality 
which may well serve as the kernel of all reality, the less 
easily are we frightened by the obscurity, nay more, by 
the hostility of our environment, and the more confi- 
dently shall we maintain the fundamental truth against 
all contradictions. In surveying all that is promised 
us through the closer union of religion with the funda- 
mental fact of the spiritual life, we need have no 
concern lest such a union should inflict any damage 
on religion. 

We may, however, feel some concern, — this we readily 
admit, — as to whether the new goal which we are 
seeking does not lie outside the radius of Christianity 
rather than within it. The answer to this question 
depends on what we are to understand by belonging to 
a religion, and this again on what we are to consider as 
the core and essence of a religion. If religion means a 
closed system of doctrines and institutions, then he 
alone may count as an adherent who accepts this system 
in its fullest extent. This view, however, we have opposed 
through the whole course of our enquiry. If religion 
has to do first and foremost with life, then its essential 
and distinguishing function is the characteristic shaping 
it gives to life and the question resolves itself into this, — 
whether we also shape life in this way, identify our- 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 191 

selves with the life-movement thus initiated and carry 
it on still further along similar lines, or the contrary. 
Now it has become thoroughly clear to us that Chris- 
tianity deals with the widest possible range of the 
problems inherent in our human nature as a whole and 
sounds their utmost depths, — that, therefore, together 
with a very well-marked individuality, it may at the 
same time claim to possess a universal character, not as 
something that it has already attained, but as something 
that it is progressively seeking to realise. To attach 
oneself to such a movement is not at all the same thing 
as accepting without further ado a ready-made position ; 
it means rather that we identify ourselves with the 
creative working of the whole movement and further 
it to the best of our ability. Such a movement, more- 
over, is a fact of the most significant kind. A very 
characteristic type of life has here taken shape and pene- 
trates the whole history of the world with its trans- 
forming leaven. To appreciate this properly we should 
bear in mind that the number of possibilities which our 
life contains when viewed from the inside is strictly 
limited ; they can be reviewed quite easily. We should 
select that possibility which best includes and develops 
life in all its breadth and depth. This, however, is 
what we maintain of the Christian type of life. His- 
torical Christianity, therefore, rests upon an eternal 
Christianity, but is immensely important from the fact 
that it made the eternal Christianity appear for the first 
time upon the plane of history and become a power in 
the world. Therewith the previously detached frag- 
ments of truth became for the first time welded into a 
whole and operative as a whole. A struggle with re- 
sistant elements was undertaken all along the line and 



i 9 2 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

a historical embodiment came into being which, with 
all its imperfections, yet aimed at the highest and has 
brought us to the point where we stand to-day. To 
sever ourselves from this great movement of the ages 
and to ignore the deepest experiences of mankind would 
be a falling into the void, an abandonment of life to 
shallow subjectivity. 

Moreover, the investigation we have made shows clearly 
that there is nothing in the new requirements of to-day 
which breaks with the fundamental truth of Christianity ; 
this latter is only carried on further in accordance with 
the stage of historical development which we have now 
reached. We saw the necessity of maintaining a re- 
ligion which both transcends and penetrates the world, 
in order to make spiritual creation at all possible and 
to oppose to the hurry of progress a life in spiritual 
possession of itself. We saw that the supremacy of 
the spiritual life which Christianity supports with so 
much emphasis can and must maintain itself even on 
modern ground. We saw that the spiritual activity 
of man can never depend upon the capacity of the iso- 
lated individual, but that obstacles without and divisions 
within can be overcome only through the living presence 
of a life which draws from the whole, a life which does 
not merely raise what is given to a higher power, but 
transforms its very essence. We convinced ourselves 
of the permanent significance of the distinctively Chris- 
tian morality; we convinced ourselves also that the 
moral idea could rightfully claim to direct the whole life. 
The concrete fact which gave stability and orientation to 
life had to be shifted further back, but a central concrete 
actuality of a spiritual kind was found to be absolutely 
indispensable, and with it was disclosed also the pos- 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 193 

sibility of retaining, within religion, the permanent 
significance of the individual personality. Lastly, the 
formation of an independent community under the 
banner of religion was shown to be indispensable. Thus 
the change which the conditions of the age call for does 
not touch the fundamental fact and the essential truth : 
it falls within them. The truth itself is not shaken 
because in its development among us men it has to pass 
through different phases. In the light of such re- 
flexions we believe ourselves justified in returning a con- 
fident Yes to the question : Can we still be Christians ? 

A confirmation of the statement that Christianity, in 
its very uniqueness, possesses not only a just claim but 
also a supremacy and an abiding truth, can be easily 
furnished by a comparison of its particular character 
with that of other religions and also with such a religious 
movement as opposes Christianity to-day from the side 
of culture. 

Of the other religions we note in particular Judaism 
and the Indian religions. Judaism is great through the 
resoluteness and purity of its morals. It reverences the 
freedom of man ; it summons him to a life of busy 
activity and induces in him a vigorous confident temper. 
Through a long series of troublous times it has kept 
up a joyful and courageous attitude towards life and 
engendered, in particular, a capacity for social self- 
sacrifice such as can hardly be paralleled. But, despite 
all these services, it has an inner limitation. It does not, 
like a religion of redemption, effect a revolution and 
renewal of man's life. Therefore, it never reaches a new 
standpoint, and cannot adequately sound the depths 
of sorrow, darkness, and sin. It cannot escape being 
unduly optimistic and there is a certain sobriety which 



i 9 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

it never transcends. Soul- warmth it attains only in 
so far as it remains the conviction of a somewhat small, 
exclusive, self-centred circle. Once it leaves this, it is 
prone to become abstract and rationalistic. Since the 
appearance of Christianity it has been left stranded in 
the course of the world's advance, although Christianity 
contains many more unsolved problems and is far more 
prone to come into collision with culture. 

The Indian religions point in an absolutely opposite 
direction. They have achieved the great revolution 
of world and life with wonderful impressiveness and made 
it an immediate experience of the soul. Since all man's 
care and effort are here expended on the problem of 
turning from the world of appearance and becoming 
to the eternal unity, life becomes magnificently simple, 
and a mood of exalted tenderness penetrates the whole 
sphere of being. But there is no return, as there is in 
Christianity, from the negative to the positive position, 
from the denial of the world to the giving it a real value. 
Life, conceived impersonally, finds no road to any satisfy- 
ing activity. It remains to too great an extent mere 
contemplation. Overshadowed by speculative meta- 
physic, ethics never obtains her due. 

Christianity also effects a revolution of the world and, 
to this extent, involves a metaphysic. But this meta- 
physic springs from life and especially from its ethical 
experience. It is therefore of a far more vigorous type, 
and can come back from its speculation to exercise an 
uplifting influence upon the world and effect there a 
radical renewal. Thus Christianity has a capacity 
for assimilating the problems of other religions and work- 
ing for their solution. It is true that in virtue of its 
greater breadth it runs the risk of becoming less simple 



JUST CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 195 

and less intelligible to the individual, but we saw that 
there was in the bosom of Christianity itself the where- 
withal to counteract such a danger. And this is just 
what our own time demands. 

In conclusion, we must note very briefly the great 
superiority of the Christian type of life and the Christian 
movement to all that vague religiosity which is in process 
of developing to-day and which thinks, in its self-satisfied 
conceit, that it can look down on Christianity. It is 
true that this religiosity is justified in so far as it demands 
an immediacy of religious experience in opposition to 
all dependence on the mere past. But if from the 
starting-point of such an immediacy we are to win a 
content for religion, then the subjectivity of the mere 
individual must be lifted into an independent spiritual 
life which rises above the fortuitousness of individuals. 
It is from the standpoint of such a spiritual life that great 
experiences are alone possible and that a friendly rela- 
tion to history can also be effected. But if the subject 
be left to its own resources, then it can never get further 
than a transient fluctuation of empty feelings. There 
is no possibility of welding individuals together, since 
their unlimited subjectivity drives them in different 
directions. And how from such fleeting figures can we 
expect any vigorous resistance to the immensity of 
darkness and hostility which threatens our life ? How 
attain a stable position which will withstand the shifting 
surface currents of the age? This life of religiosity 
would not even wear the colouring of religion if it did not 
borrow from the very Christianity which it cannot 
sufficiently disparage. Thus vague religiosity must be 
regarded not as a promising beginning, but only as a 
symptom of a religious crisis. This crisis, however, 



196 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

cannot be weathered by an abandonment of Christianity, 
but only by an extension of it, — not by an abrupt re- 
jection of all the work of history, but only by referring 
this work to that within it which is true and eternal. 

II. The Impossibility of a Reform within the 
Existing Churches 

That Christianity is more than its ecclesiastical forms 
is a conviction that lay at the root of our whole enquiry. 
It was this conviction alone which authorised us to 
strive for an understanding between Christianity and 
the present stage of development in spiritual life. Thus 
our decision in favour of Christianity does not prejudice 
our verdict as regards the particular churches. We have 
first of all to enquire whether these are capable of tak- 
ing up the movement which has been maturing through 
the history of the ages and therewith developing Chris- 
tianity beyond the point reached by the Church to-day. 
We must limit ourselves in this enquiry to the churches 
with which we Germans and western Europeans generally 
are mainly concerned, viz. Catholicism and Protestant- 
ism. And we must consider them not in their constitu- 
tion as a whole, but only in their attitude to the problem 
of a development of Christianity. 

(a) Catholicism 

That Catholicism declines to further this development 
and cannot do otherwise if it is to be loyal to its own fun- 
damental idea, is a fact which cannot be disputed. It has 
stereotyped as final the form which Christianity reached 
in the zenith of the Middle Ages, and it can therefore 
admit of forward development in surface matters only 



IMPOSSIBILITY OF A REFORM 197 

and not in its fundamental content. If forward develop- 
ments have really been effected in this latter, as our in- 
vestigation seemed to show, then Catholicism is in a 
very difficult position. It is true that this stereotyping of 
an unchangeable content in both life and belief possesses 
peculiar advantages. It produces a strong feeling of 
rest and security which counts for much amid life's 
doubts and troubles. Moreover, the common human 
experiences implied in it are a safeguard against de- 
pendence on the changing currents of mere surface 
movements. But at the same time we must not be 
blind to the grave dangers of such a stereotyping process. 
There is in the first place the danger that life will become 
less original if once more repetition takes the place of 
independent production. If on the other hand it be 
urged that there are great advantages in historical 
continuity, we must remember that true continuity 
does not mean a uniform persistence, but a persistence 
of the same spirit through a variety of shapes. In 
Catholicism, however, there is no room for such variety. 
The fixing of the form, moreover, becomes a hindrance 
to life when once the progress of the centuries has brought 
forth such far-reaching changes as those which have 
actually taken place. For then the form must exer- 
cise an ever harsher pressure upon those who cling to 
it, and must have recourse to a mode of proof which be- 
comes more and more artificial the farther man travels 
from the starting-point of mediaeval organisation. As 
a matter of fact, Catholicism has constantly narrowed 
its boundaries as compared with mediaeval conditions 
under which many forms could still exist side by side. 
This happened first through its opposition to the 
Reformation and subsequently through its opposition 



198 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

to culture. It is therefore increasingly unable to em- 
brace the whole spiritual movement of mankind. It 
becomes more and more just one particular sect, and, 
despite all outward achievements, yet loses the true 
catholicity. 

In addition to these dangers common to all stereotyp- 
ing of forms, there are complications arising out of the 
particular way in which mediaevalism accomplished the 
process. Two points in particular are characteristic of 
its method. In the first place it effected a comprehen- 
sive synthesis of life, an adjustment of life's varied 
interests under the leadership of religion. This is a 
very great, and in its way unique achievement. An 
irresistible longing of the human spirit for unity of life 
is here recognised and satisfied in a manner suitable to 
the conditions of that age. There is in this a universality 
which gives lasting greatness to Catholicism and enables 
it to extend its influence over all departments of life. 
Yet the mediaeval way of solving the problem is bound to 
prove unsatisfactory in the long run. The individual 
elements in its synthesis were for the most part already 
fully formed before they entered into the combination. 
There was Christianity in the shape which it had as- 
sumed at the closing epoch of antiquity ; there was the 
Greek element represented in particular by the Aristo- 
telian philosophy ; there was the Roman organisation. 
All these were combined not so as to form an inner 
unity and mutually permeate each other within an inclu- 
sive whole ; they were merely adjusted skilfully by help 
of the idea of gradation. This method may blunt the 
edge of contradictions, or even push them altogether out 
of sight, but at bottom it is never really more than a 
compilation. Modern thought, on the other hand, is so 



IMPOSSIBILITY OF A REFORM 199 

strong in its desire for independence and original experi- 
ence that it insists upon an inner unity of life, and this 
must be insisted on especially by all those who would fain 
bring Christianity into closer touch with that stage of 
historical development which the spiritual life has now 
reached. 

There is a second important point. It was quite in 
accordance with the slack and jaded mood which char- 
acterised the close of antiquity to rivet the spiritual 
life to a sensible embodiment and only accord it a full 
reality when it was made obvious to the senses. This 
has the advantage of making things very vivid and 
forcible, and it favours a close union of religion with art. 
But it tended also to make the invisible kingdom of God 
more and more secondary to the visible Church. Man, 
despairing of his own powers, came to rest his convic- 
tions not upon the emotions and experiences of his own 
soul, but entirely upon the authority of the Church, so 
that finally he believed not so much in God and in the 
Christian truth as in the Catholic Church. This attitude 
of mind is already apparent in Augustine when he writes : 
"I would not believe the Gospel, if the authority of the 
Catholic Church did not induce me thereto." In the 
Middle Ages, among spiritually immature nations, this 
tendency grew more and more marked, till at length the 
Church became the sole repository of truth and the moral 
conscience of mankind. This, however, necessarily 
implies the enfeeblement of the independent life of per- 
sonality, for such a life must wrestle with ultimate 
problems for itself. Thus the greatness of the Church 
makes the individual of small account. With all its busy 
industry and readiness for sacrifice, it does not produce a 
Christianity of manly freedom, strong and upright. 



200 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

With this too is associated the further danger that the 
Church may pose as an ultimate end in itself, and there- 
with make the maintenance of its own position and the 
spreading of its power take precedence of all other 
tasks, — a procedure which will necessarily involve it in 
worldly affairs to the serious damage of its spirituality. 
Life is thus threatened with a too abundant growth of 
ecclesiasticism at the expense of concern for the soul, 
with an overvaluation of services done to the Church as 
opposed to spiritual changes wrought in man. 

If all this results in an implacable antagonism to that 
strengthening of the inner life which our modern age has 
effected, or must at any rate desire to effect, we must also 
remember that the riveting of the spiritual life to a 
sensory element, which is characteristic of the older 
thought, is utterly incompatible with the newer and freer 
conceptions. In particular, the riveting of religious 
influences to outward occurrences, as exemplified in the 
old view of the sacraments, seems to our modern temper 
to be a kind of magic and, therefore, not to be tolerated. 
What an impassable gulf we are conscious of between the 
old world and the new, when episcopal decrees still 
speak of " demons" and the denial of them is regarded as 
an effluence of infidelity ! In the light of these con- 
siderations the conclusion becomes inevitable that it is 
impossible, within Catholicism, to effect a radical re- 
newal of Christianity and adjust it to that stage which the 
spiritual life has now reached in the course of its histori- 
cal development. With Catholicism the last word is 
"stability," and the eternal truth is ever in bondage to a 
temporal power. 



IMPOSSIBILITY OF A REFORM 201 

(b) Protestantism 

In Protestantism the chances of an adjustment seem 
much more favourable. For since its own birth involved 
a breach with tradition it cannot possibly disallow the 
right of progress. Its history, moreover, shows very 
diverse phases and a close connexion with culture as a 
whole. Why, then, should it not be possible for it to come 
to terms with things as they are to-day ? 

But the matter is not so simple as it seems when thus 
presented. In the first place, the old Protestantism did 
not regard itself as in any way a mere part of a progress- 
ing movement, but rather as a highly necessary restora- 
tion of a truth which had been tarnished and disfigured 
but was in itself valid to all eternity. To this extent it 
shows just as decided an aversion to the idea of progress 
as did Catholicism. It is only on viewing its funda- 
mental position more closely that we see a greater 
possibility of movement involved in it. It was a great 
and invaluable service to have saved Christianity from 
being swamped by ecclesiasticism and to have recalled 
it in such emphatic terms to its main task, — the 
formation of a moral and personal life. For the pursuit 
of this task, Protestantism regarded it as indispensable 
to bring out the unique character of Christianity with 
the utmost clearness, to free it from all alien accretion 
and in general to make religion, so far as possible, self- 
dependent. Busied with these aims, it allowed concern 
for culture to fall into the background. This indeed, in 
comparison with the supreme task, seemed a more or less 
indifferent matter which could be left to itself. Culture 
therefore became freer, and it is quite intelligible that, 
when once the Reformation movement had lost its initial 



202 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

force, culture should exercise in turn a strong influence 
on the religious life, and in doing so should not be con- 
scious at the outset of contradicting in any way the fun- 
damental character of the Reformation. As a matter of 
fact, the newer Protestantism, as developed first by the 
Enlightenment and subsequently by the new humanism, 
is very alien from the Reformation and, in essential 
points, even opposed to it. For whether the newer 
Protestantism assume a more rationalistic and practical 
shape, as in the Enlightenment, or one more artistic 
and universal, as in the new humanism, whether it wear 
the colour of deism, as in the former case or of panenthe- 
ism, as in the latter, yet in both cases it is characterised 
by a glad feeling of confidence in man's powers, a strong 
immanental leaning, a tendency to overlook the obscur- 
ity of life and its inward struggles. 

If our great poets and thinkers avowed themselves 
disciples of the Reformation, this was mainly because its 
human and universal character, its exaltation of person- 
ality and its strengthening of the inner life seemed to 
them the decisive and all-important matter. It was 
also because their attitude to these things was in two 
points essentially different from our position to-day. 
For one thing the historical consciousness was not awake 
then as now, when the differences of the various life- 
systems are presented to us in sharp clearness of outline 
so that it is absolutely impossible for one to merge 
easily into another. Thus in dealing with art, even men 
like Lessing and Goethe classed together under the simple 
term "ancients" the very widely divergent phases of the 
old-time world. People thought even in rougher and 
more general categories than is possible to us to-day. 
Then again the conception of culture has undergone a 



IMPOSSIBILITY OF A REFORM 203 

great change since that time. Culture then was mainly 
idealistic culture, the inward shaping of man, which 
seemed quite compatible with Christianity, in the broader 
application of that term. Now, on the other hand, we 
are dominated by a realistic culture which regards the 
right relation of man to his environment as the sole 
means of salvation. If, under the former regime, art 
exercised lordship over life, now art must abdicate in 
favour of natural science. Such a development, however, 
tears religion and culture far apart, so that the concep- 
tion of a culture-religion becomes impossible. 

All this makes the situation to-day very difficult. 
We do not seem able to build up an idealistic culture 
from our own resources, so we return to the classical 
expression of it and seek to strengthen ourselves by 
emphasising its greatness and beauty. At the same 
time, however, realism and the experiences of the nine- 
teenth century have made us see so much mystery and 
complexity in our human existence and have aroused so 
many doubts that we no longer have full faith in that 
classical idealism. Even if we could still keep to it, it 
would no longer satisfy us. And even so far as we do 
keep to it, our historical cast of thought forces us to 
recognise the wide gulf which separates it from the 
Christianity of the Reformers, the sharp contrast between 
the strict and solemn ethical character of Luther's reli- 
gion of redemption, and the glad and for the most part 
artistically attuned temper of our classical panentheism. 

In the light of all this, is it possible for us to believe 
that the needful renovation of Christianity, the carrying 
it back to its deepest life-sources, can be accomplished 
within the pale of Protestantism? It may perhaps be 
said that Protestantism, taken in its total extent, gives 



204 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

us, in religion and immanental culture, both terms of the 
opposition, both poles of life. But as thus presented to 
us they cannot be brought together. If we are to dis- 
cover in each something needful and valuable, indepen- 
dently of historical form, then we must set them in a larger 
whole of life, and there seek to adjust them with each 
other. Such an undertaking, however, would no longer 
be carried on within Protestantism. Protestantism 
itself would become for it a problem, a problem whose 
solution could only be sought in the whole of human life. 
Within Protestantism we may quite honestly value 
both the old type and the new, but every attempt to grasp 
the peculiarities of each more precisely shows that they 
cannot exist directly alongside in one Church. For it is 
not a question here of a mere more or less that could be 
adjusted by mutual concession, but the main directions 
part asunder, nay, even run counter to each other, both 
as regards doctrines and in the shaping of life. The 
bond of union between the two types is simply the 
value attached by both alike to personality and the 
inward life, helped also by their common "struggle 
against Rome." This, however, is not enough to produce 
a religious community strong enough to deal with the 
tremendous problems of the present day. In face of the 
great diversity of these two types, their continued union 
in one ecclesiastical organisation must work more harm 
than good. The conflict of the one with the other con- 
sumes much energy and effects but small inward ad- 
vance. The adherent of the old regime will not unreason- 
ably regard and treat the new as an unauthorised intruder. 
The new may meet this reproach by urging its rights as a 
historical development. And this also is not unreason- 
able. But why then does it tie itself down to the old 



IMPOSSIBILITY OF A REFORM 205 

forms ? Why does it not seek to create new forms from 
its own resources ? 

If again we regard the two types separately, then 
neither seems in a position to surmount the present 
crisis by itself. The old Protestantism is especially 
hard hit by the complications involved in the old Chris- 
tian doctrine of the Atonement, and as it bases itself 
wholly upon the Bible it is still more directly affected 
than Catholicism by the changes and doubts which 
Biblical criticism has aroused. We need only compare 
the present struggle over the Bible with Luther's words : 
"It must be the settled and adamantine conviction of 
every Christian that the holy Scriptures are a spiritual 
light far clearer than the sun itself, especially in that 
which concerns salvation or the one thing needful." 
Also it is impossible for us to share the Reformers' 
belief in the corruption of the world and to look upon 
general culture as a matter of indifference to Christianity, 
a conviction expressed, for example, in the words of 
Melanchthon : "What else is the whole generation of 
men outside of the spirit than a kingdom of the devil, a 
confused chaos of darkness?" In the Protestantism of 
the old type life is apt to split up into a concentrated 
but narrow religion, a "specific" Christianity, and a 
merely secular culture, dissevered from the highest aims. 

The new Protestantism has the great advantage of 
being open-minded as regards the great problems of the 
age, and also of being closely linked with the work of 
science ; but, regarded as a whole, it remains too depend- 
ent upon the panen theism of the classical period. Thus 
it finds difficulty in preserving for religion the necessary 
supremacy and in opposing a sure central truth to the 
tremendous complexities of the age. It does not fully ap- 



206 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

predate the dark and hostile elements in our life and does 
not, therefore, set itself to counteract them adequately. 
It is not sufficiently energetic in carrying out the re- 
newal of the existing situation, involving as it does a 
metaphysic and the recognition of a mysterious depth in 
the universe. Hence the danger that religion may lack 
the stern and rugged element, the power to reject and 
repel, without which it cannot fulfil its task. 

As regards the more specific conception of Christianity, 
the preponderating tendency in the new Protestantism 
to turn from dogma to the personality of Jesus, — justifi- 
able though it may be to maintain a sure nucleus of fact 
in the face of all criticism, — does not afford a sufficiently 
broad and strong basis for a universal religion that is to 
establish and permeate the whole life. Such a personal- 
ity can be put in the right light and estimated at its 
full significance only in the setting of a wider context. 
The doctrine of the Atonement supplied this for the older 
thought. We can find it only in a spiritual life which 
both supports and uplifts the world. This, however, 
leads us on to other paths and beyond the bounds of any 
particular creed. 

III. The Indispensableness of a New Christianity 

We arrived at the conviction that there is no hope of 
effecting a sufficiently thorough renewal of Christianity 
to satisfy present needs within the pale of the existing 
churches. Catholicism is too rigid for our purpose, 
while Protestantism is prevented from assuming the 
lead in this great movement, if only by reason of the 
irreconcilable opposition between its older and its newer 
types. All specific objections are further strengthened 



A NEW CHRISTIANITY INDISPENSABLE 207 

by the consideration that the problem to-day has out- 
grown not merely the limits of this or that creed, but 
also of Christianity and even of religion itself. It has 
extended to the whole of life. We have become con- 
fused as to the foundations of our life and being. While 
the external world has been flooded with fresh light, the 
meaning of our own existence has become obscured. 
Anyone who properly appreciates the greatness of this 
crisis will admit that the movement for the revival of 
religion is not concerned with an opposition within one 
special church, but with a matter of pressing and urgent 
importance to the whole of humanity. 

Earlier ages had their ideals of life and culture which 
comprehended all departments and made all action sub- 
serve one dominating aim. These ideals have grown 
pale and thin to us. It is true that the great spirits of 
past time speak to us also, but, as our own inner life is not 
sufficiently awake, we only hear their words and their 
soul does not penetrate to us. They leave us cold at 
heart, and do not further the development of our real 
nature. But among ourselves also certain ideals are 
dominant. A great field of work has been opened up in 
the surface regions of life and has been most fruit- 
fully developed. The work thus undertaken now holds 
us in an ever firmer grip and inspires in all departments 
of human activity an ever growing inclination to 
accept the work-world as a model and enforce its 
ideals on all alike. Thus we are by no means con- 
cerned here with mere individual opinions or cur- 
rents of thought which are only superficial and 
transitory, but rather with real developments of life, 
each striving for lordship and exclusive lordship. Com- 
mon to them all, however, is the shifting of the main 



208 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

centre of activity to the point where it comes into con- 
tact with environment, and the repression and stifling 
of everything which, under the name of inner life, seemed 
once of paramount importance. 

Thus it is the preponderating tendency of modern 
science to take the nature around us for the whole of 
reality, and allow it to swallow up our soul-life entirely. 
This means that it abandons all the distinctive quali- 
ties and valuations which the soul-life seemed hitherto 
to possess, and also that it underrates the significance 
of history. The social movement works in the same 
direction of suppressing and absorbing the inner by the 
outer ; economic problems and the material welfare of 
man are given precedence over everything else. All our 
effort and energy are claimed for them, and the manner in 
which these problems are solved is allowed to determine 
the whole character of life and the treatment of inner 
problems also. iEstheticism again and epicureanism, 
which have a much wider implication than the pleasure- 
seeking of mere individuals, push the inner life far into 
the background. The growing refinement of sensibility, 
the greater mobility and the increasing differentiation of 
life, the free and airy severance of subjective mood from 
all material fetters, these things combine to prevent any 
concentration of life into self-activity ; they break up its 
unity and change it into a mere play upon the surface- 
side of things. Thus growth of the external world, 
growth of work which aims at modifying the outward 
conditions of life, and the reduction of man to a bundle 
of impressions and sensibilities, — all work together to 
destroy the freedom of the soul and make even the quest 
for it seem meaningless. And they can pursue their 
work all the more effectively and with the greater assump- 



A NEW CHRISTIANITY INDISPENSABLE 209 

tion of infallibility since, firstly, they meet with no active 
opposition from within, — no ideal of man as a whole in 
himself, — and, secondly, they have behind them a record 
of productive achievement, the fruitfulness of which is 
beyond dispute. Thus it is not the mere subject whose 
relationship to life is becoming more intricate ; the prob- 
lem lies in life itself: it has moved ever more and more 
towards the circumference and now does not see what is 
to become of the centre. 

Growing organisations of life can only be adequately 
met by similar organisations. To oppose them with 
mere theories would be to fight realities with shadows. 
If then we feel that we must have a dominating central 
point whence to start our construction of life, and if 
again the want of unity in the various peripheral con- 
structions compel us to create some such central point, 
then we must have as a result a distinctive life-organisa- 
tion which will ensure an equilibrium to life. This 
organisation, however, cannot be simply borrowed from 
the past, for all the achievements of the past have not 
prevented our falling into the present predicament. 
Thus we must grapple with the great problem for our- 
selves and seek a something more in the inwardness of 
our life. We must strengthen this inward element, 
discovering new depths in it, new facts, new connexions, 
till at length we arrive at an inward world which can 
meet the world that presses in on us from without, on an 
equal or even a superior footing. Thus it is no mere 
brooding and reflecting that we are concerned with, but 
an active forward development. This strengthening 
of the inward element we sought to reach through 
anchoring man in a spiritual life and a spiritual world. 

But the problem of a development of life as a whole 



210 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

cannot be handled in a new way without further involving 
the question of our whole attitude to reality and demand- 
ing from us a clear account as to our capacity to reach 
the necessary goal. But in following along these lines 
we soon discover that as the undertaking grows in magni- 
tude, so also do the dangers. We cannot develop as a 
whole without encountering stiff opposition and serious 
obstacles both within and without ; and we cannot settle 
with these in any thorough fashion or combat them with 
any hope of success without turning to religion. Thus 
it is the struggle for a spiritual self-preservation both of 
man and of mankind which drives us of necessity to 
religion. 

For the main strength of religion lies in the fact that it 
can appreciate resistance and obstacles and also over- 
come them. The tendency of general culture is to put 
them as much as possible in the background where they 
cannot be seen; religion, on the other hand, brings 
them out with the utmost clearness. And this it can do 
without danger of succumbing to them or bringing life 
to a standstill, because it is in a position to rise above 
immediate existence and open up a new life which tran- 
scends the world. But even after doing so, it does not 
let the hostile element vanish altogether away, but holds 
it firm and thus introduces a constant strain and move- 
ment into life. The distinctive quality and greatness 
of religion lies in the fact that vigorous denial precedes 
the advance to affirmation and that even in the affirma- 
tion the element of denial is still present. Religion 
brings out the fact that our life is full of knots and entan- 
glements, but also rich in ways of surmounting them, and, 
by keeping both aspects in close relation, it shows life as 
the home of contrasts, and begets a continuous move- 



A NEW CHRISTIANITY INDISPENSABLE 211 

ment from which new forces and developments may 
be constantly expected to arise. Religion, moreover, 
reaches back to ultimate origins and can oppose to limi- 
tation, infinity ; to time, eternity. Where this is clearly 
expressed and strongly felt, religion becomes the supreme 
power in life, able to subdue and annihilate all opposi- 
tion, and strengthen everything with which it allies 
itself. Does not experience teach us that everything 
which has once gripped man's whole soul, even though 
it be the denial of religion, has yet developed into a kind 
of religion? We see it in our own day both in the 
naturalistic movement and the socialistic. 

The only antidote, then, to the soullessness of modern 
culture and the starving of all inward life is a return to the 
deepening and quickening forces of religion. But our 
statement of the case has shown further that the revival 
of religion leads direct to Christianity. The world- 
service which Christianity has rendered in the building- 
up of a new world and the elevation of mankind is abso- 
lutely indispensable for religious progress. The present 
day, in particular, with its moral slackness, stands in 
urgent need of rousing and regeneration through the 
moral earnestness of Christianity. In the bosom of 
Christianity unfathomable forces are slumbering, forces 
which have by no means lived themselves out and are 
still capable of breaking forth again and driving human 
life into new channels with an irresistible and elemental 
violence. The contact of divine and human begets 
daimonic forces which may work either for revolution 
and renewal, or for destruction and desolation. To 
gain control of these and lead them into the paths of 
productive work is one main task of the religious com- 
munity. But the particular way of apprehending this 



212 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

task may in the lapse of time become narrow and stereo- 
typed. Then arises the need of appealing from it to the 
primal force itself and summoning this to the task of new 
creation, — if indeed we really believe that a great 
world-religion is not a closed book but a growing 
movement which is permeating the world. 

Our own epoch is one in which such a need has arisen. 
For whoever takes an unprejudiced view of the pres- 
ent situation cannot doubt but that the churches are 
far from being an unqualified help to religion and, in 
many respects, are really doing it harm. Take naturalis- 
tic monism, which for the most part is nothing more 
than a weakened infusion of the old Enlightenment 
mixed with a little natural science. Would it at- 
tract and hold such a large body of adherents, — by 
no means all of an iconoclastic temper, — if it were not 
that the religion of the churches persists in upholding a 
conception of the world which not only contradicts 
modern science in regard to individual results but is 
diametrically opposed to its whole way of thinking? 
And would German socialism, — differing in this respect 
from that of the English-speaking countries, — take up 
such an uncompromising attitude to religion and Chris- 
tianity, were it not that it looks upon the Church as 
mainly a political arrangement, pledged to uphold 
" throne and altar"? It is, moreover, no unfriendly 
criticism, but a fact borne out by statistics, that in all 
countries there is a continued diminution, at times quite 
appalling in its extent, in the number of those who 
dedicate themselves to the service of the Church and also 
in the number of those who take a vital interest in her 
work. Are we to view this declension from religion 
complacently and allow it to assume still greater propor- 



A NEW CHRISTIANITY INDISPENSABLE 213 

tions ? Through fear of touching the churches are we to 
look on quietly while religion slips out of our life ? Or 
are we to put religion above the churches and seek new 
ways, mindful of Goethe's saying: " Necessity is the 
best counsellor" ? 

We do not feel that in this conviction of ours we are 
actuated by any hostility to the churches. We know 
how to appreciate the good work they are doing even 
to-day in strengthening and deepening life and raising 
the moral tone of the community. But it is just one of 
the tragic features of man's lot that individual excellence 
and industry are of no avail, if once the whole movement 
be no longer in touch with the spiritual life of the time or 
in actual opposition to it. This, however, describes the 
position of the churches to-day, so that while asserting 
Christianity we must yet take up a negative attitude as 
regards the churches. 

If in all this progressive movement we take as our 
standard of measurement the position of the spiritual 
life as it has worked itself out in history, then we are in 
no danger of abandoning truth in the interests of a 
situation which is merely transient. For the fluctuation 
of human opinion and sentiment with its fickleness and 
proneness to reaction is something very different from 
the gradual building-up of a historical structure, the pro- 
gressive revelation and development of the spiritual life 
which goes on independently of any given temporal 
situation. With regard to the former it is impossible 
to be sufficiently critical and sceptical. Throughout 
this work we too have waged incessant warfare against 
superficial tendencies of the time. But that other 
movement, with its gradual elaboration of a permanent 
truth-content, must be present in our own effort, further- 



2i 4 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

ing and guiding it. Here we have the origin of an order of 
things which has been developing throughout the world's 
history, which is proof against resistance, and will have 
a deep and permanent influence upon humanity. The 
spirit of the time and the time-spirit are fundamentally 
different things. He who wishes to comprehend the 
spirit of the time must free himself from the time-spirit. 
And the spirit of the time demands to-day a rejuvenation 
of the religious life, in which new wine shall no longer 
be poured into old wineskins. It makes this demand 
not directly on behalf of religion nor with any great 
parade of religion, but rather out of concern for the 
salvation of the spiritual life of humanity, the salvation 
of a spiritual civilisation, the salvation of human person- 
ality. Anything that proceeds from such a necessity 
of the world's development carries within itself the sure 
guarantee of success, however uncertain we may be to-day 
of paths to the goal. And the time for winning men 
over to the movement will be that moment in which 
the gradual process of killing life's soul comes home to 
the personal feeling, and, from being perhaps an amus- 
ing spectacle, is transformed into an all too painful ex- 
perience. Then too it will dawn upon man clearly that 
when once the spiritual life as a whole is lost, no spiritual 
values can remain at certain isolated spots and along 
particular lines of research ; that there need be no further 
talk of good and beautiful or even of true, and that love, 
justice, and honour are but foolish conceits. When once 
the movement becomes as strong as this, it will soon 
find the requisite forms. 

To-day we are still far from such a crisis, and we must 
first of all strive to find the right line of quest. But 
the seekers are many, and it is important that they 



A NEW CHRISTIANITY INDISPENSABLE 215 

should be far more conscious than they are of a commu- 
nity of effort, that they should come closer together and 
work unitedly to restore first of all such outward condi- 
tions as are requisite for any creative advance. With 
us in Germany it is the relation of Church to State and 
especially the existence of a Protestant established Church 
which stands in urgent need of change, — particularly 
so in the interests of religion itself. The defenders of the 
State- Church seem to us vastly to underestimate the 
importance of the crisis in which Christianity finds itself 
to-day, and also not to appreciate fully the change 
which the State has undergone since the time of the 
Reformation. When a whole nation is dominated by 
one uniform religious conviction, there may be great 
advantages in the arrangement by which the State takes 
over the guidance of the Church. It is quite otherwise, 
however, when the age is rent with acute religious dif- 
ferences as is ours to-day. Then one of two things is 
inevitable : either the State will help one of the parties 
and suppress the other, or it will seek some compromise 
which, as being an impossible adjustment, will in the 
end satisfy nobody. The older states, moreover, had a 
far more permanent character than belongs to our modern 
communities with their parliamentary government and 
party system. Under modern conditions, the welding of 
Church and State exerts an unpardonable pressure, 
particularly on the schools, and the weed of hypocrisy 
is all too prone to flourish. Pressure and hypocrisy 
between them are continually exciting much wrath and 
bitterness against religion and giving the ill-disposed an 
opening for regarding it as a mere arrangement of political 
expediency. Jatho's case shows us very clearly how 
untenable the present system is. We can hardly deny 



216 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

that every church which wishes to be more than a mere 
debating-club on religious and philosophical themes must 
require that its teachers shall possess certain fundamental 
convictions ; and it is equally certain that in the case in 
question the deviation from recognised church orthodoxy 
was very considerable. How came it to pass, then, that 
the decision of the Court, which in theory could scarcely 
be impugned, yet aroused so much contradiction and 
even anger ? It was because a decision pronounced in the 
name of an established State-Church excludes the man 
affected by it from the religious community of his nation, 
and thus inflicts a certain stain upon him and puts 
difficulties in the way of his religious effectiveness. So 
long as the Protestant Church bears the form of 
an established State-Church, such a settlement should 
never have met with the approval of broad-minded 
men. When in scientific work a formally correct syllo- 
gism leads to a false conclusion, we take it for granted 
that there is some flaw in the premises. When in 
practical life the correct application of a statutory defi- 
nition wounds many earnest-minded men, the fault 
must lie with the definition. Thus this case affords 
an eloquent proof of the fact that the days are gone by in 
which the union of State and Church was beneficial to 
religion. That the severing of the old connexion need 
not involve any disturbance, but can be effected coolly 
and without animosity is proved very convincingly by 
recent Swiss examples. 

At the same time we must indeed bear in mind that 
the severance of Church from State does not in itself 
give us any direct assurance as regards the one matter of 
supreme importance, the rejuvenescence and strengthen- 
ing of religion. It simply supplies a condition which 



A NEW CHRISTIANITY INDISPENSABLE 217 

facilitates constructive work along this line. It is highly 
probable that the severance of Church from State and the 
disruption which we might expect of the Church which 
stands for unity would be productive, in the first instance, 
of much error and confusion, much defection and denial. 
But at the same time one thing will be secured, and that 
the most important of all, — complete sincerity. Sincer- 
ity must be our watchword if religion is to rise up again 
and triumph over the soullessness of life. The very 
marrow of our life is eaten into and our whole personality 
weakened when sham and half-truth prevail in the very 
region which should be, even if it is not, sacred to all 
men, — the region of our ultimate convictions. Unless 
these evils be thoroughly driven out thence, there is no 
escape from the present spiritual crisis. To oppose the 
demand for complete sincerity by a policy of expediency, 
and to keep back the expression of inward necessities 
through fear of undesirable consequences should be 
particularly repugnant to Protestantism, which owes 
its very existence to an uncompromising adherence to 
such inward necessities and whose leader uttered the 
strong and forceful words: " Offence here, — offence 
there ; need is all-powerful and cannot offend. I am to 
spare weak consciences, so far as I can do this without 
danger to my soul. When such danger is involved, then 
I must consult my soul, though half the world be offended 
or the whole of it." 

These words of Luther show clearly what this question 
depends upon in last resort. In this great movement, 
this serious struggle, those alone can engage with con- 
fidence and gladness who recognise a higher life than that 
of the merely humanistic culture with its utilitarian 
goods, and who at the same time cherish the conviction 



218 CAN WE STILL BE CHRISTIANS? 

that religion is not a mere product of human hopes and 
desires, but that it opens up and brings into our life a 
wealth of concrete actuality which both transcends and 
permeates the world, and that it is, in first instance, not 
man's work but God's. If on this point the divisions 
among men become accentuated and the force of the 
great Either-Or makes itself very clearly felt in our life, 
this is all pure gain as regards its strength and truthful- 
ness. All anxious considerations as to the possible and 
probable result of an open and courageous line of action 
may be met by the following reflection: " Either re- 
ligion is merely a product of human wishes and ideas 
which have been sanctioned by tradition and society, in 
which case, as a human fabrication, it must be destroyed 
by the advancing tide of spiritual progress, and no art 
or might or cunning can arrest its downfall ; — or 
religion is based upon facts which are more than human, 
and then the fiercest attack is powerless to shake it, but 
will rather help it, through all stress of human need and 
toil, to come to its full strength and unfold more freely 
its eternal truth " (" Truth of Religion "). 

Our question was whether to-day we can still be 
Christians. Our answer is that we not only can but must 
be Christians, — only, however, on the one condition that 
Christianity be recognised as a progressive historic move- 
ment still in the making, that it be shaken free from the 
numbing influence of ecclesiasticism and placed upon 
a broader foundation. Thus here lies the task of our 
time and the hope of the future. 



'TPHE following pages contain advertisements of 
books by the same author or on kindred subjedts 



BY PROFESSOR RUDOLF EUCKEN 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in igo8 

Life's Basis and Life's Ideal 

The Fundamentals of a 
New Philosophy of Life 

By RUDOLF EUCKEN, Professor of Philosophy in the Univer- 
sity of Jena. Translated with introductory note by Alban G. 
Widgery, formerly Scholar of St. Catharine's College, and Burney 
Student, Cambridge, and Member of the University of Jena. 

Cloth, 8vo, 377 pp., index, $2.50 net; by mail, $2.63 



Professor Eucken discusses the leading principles of his philosophy 
and its application to the different spheres of life. By careful analysis 
of extant conceptions of life the author shows their inadequacy, the 
necessity for a new conception, and the direction in which this must be 
sought. The author feels that he has a message for the present time, 
and one that is vital to the true interests of all. His voice is that of a 
prophet in the sense of an ethical teacher, rather than that of a philoso- 
pher in the more technical sense. The aim of his philosophy is not to 
discuss the basis and ideal of thought, but to probe to the depth of life 
in all its complexity, and to advance to an all-inclusive ideal. The 
starting-point for us all is life as we experience it — not an apparent 
ultimate. 

The problem is a vital one ; in one form or another, at one time or 
another, every one is faced with it : how shall I mould my life ? And it 
is here that lies the importance of Professor Eucken's contention that 
we have to make our decision for one system of life and thus for one 
philosophy of life as a whole, as taken against other systems and other 
philosophies. 



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The Meaning and Value of Life 

By RUDOLF EUCKEN. Translated by Lucy Judge Gibson 
and W. R. Boyce Gibson, M.A. 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.40 net ; postpaid, $1.47 

The original work, of which the present volume is the translation, has 
already proved popular in its own country. Published in 1908, a first 
edition of some 4000 copies has been sold out and a second edition 
called for. 

Eucken's influence as a thinker has for long been felt far beyond the 
borders of his native land. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize 
for Literature. Translations of his books have appeared in many for- 
eign languages, including French, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, and Rus- 
sian. In English-speaking countries such articles on Eucken's works 
as have appeared quite recently are significantly sympathetic and ap- 
preciative. " It seems likely," writes the reviewer in the London Guar- 
dian, " that for the next decade Eucken will be the leading guide for the 
pilgrims of thought who walk on the idealist road." 

This book stands for an attempt to build a philosophy of life upon a 
basis sufficiently broad to meet all the just demands of religion and of 
modern thought. 

" There are scores of passages throughout the volume one would like 
to quote — the thinking of a man of clearest vision and loftiest outlook 
on the fabric of life as men are fashioning it to-day. It is a volume for 
Churchmen and politicians of all shades and parties, for the student and 
for the man of business, for the work-shop as well — a volume for every 
one who is seriously interested in the great business of life." — Aberdeen 
Journal, 

"The translators have presented the work in vigorous English." — 
Scotsman. 

RUDOLF EUCKEN'S 

Philosophy of Life 

By W. R. BOYCE GIBSON, M.A. 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.40 net; by mail, $1.47 

The chapters in this book were originally delivered as Inter-Collegiate 
Lectures at Westfield College, University of London. They arose out 
of the deep respect the author has for the work and personality of Pro- 
fessor Eucken, and from a profound sense of the importance of his 
teaching for Philosophy, for religion and for every-day life. Professor 
Eucken himself has read through all the proof-sheets and assisted the 
author in many ways. 

" No reader should fail to find pleasure in a book so full of fresh and 
stimulating thought, expressed with great felicity of language." — Scottish 
Review. 

" It is done with just the proper combination of sympathy and criti- 
cism." — The British Weekly. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



The Problem of Christianity 

IN TWO VOLUMES 
By Josiah Royce, LL.D., Litt. D. 

Professor of the History of Philosophy, Harvard University; Author of " Out- 
lines of Psychology," " The Philosophy of Loyalty," " William James," etc. 

Vol. I. The Christian Doctrine of Life. 

Vol. II. The Real World and the Christian Ideas. 

Cloth, i2tno, Set, $3.50 net; carriage extra 

A work of great importance to all students of religion and philosophy 
and to the general reader who keeps abreast with progress in these fields 
is Dr. Josiah Royce's "The Problem of Christianity," in two volumes, 
the first, "The Christian Doctrine of Life," and, the second, "The Real 
World and the Christian Ideas." 

Volume I is a study of the human and empirical aspects of some of the 
leading ideas of Christianity; Volume II deals with the technically 
metaphysical problems to which these ideas give rise. The two volumes 
are contrasted in their methods, the first discussing religious experience, 
the second dealing with its metaphysical foundations. They are, how- 
ever, closely connected in their purposes, and at the end the relations 
between the metaphysical and the empirical aspects of the whole under- 
taking are reviewed. 

The "Christian Ideas" which Dr. Royce treats as "leading and es- 
sential" are, first, the Idea of the " Community," historically represented 
by the Church; second, the Idea of the "Lost State of the Natural Man," 
and the third, the Idea of "Atonement," together with the somewhat 
more general Idea of "Saving Grace." 

"These three," Dr. Royce says, "have a close relation to a doctrine 
of life which, duly generalized, can be, at least in part, studied as a purely 
human ' philosophy of loyalty ' and can be estimated in empirical terms 
apart from any use of technical dogmas and apart from any metaphysical 
opinion. . . . Nevertheless no purely empirical study of the Christian 
doctrine of life can, by itself, suffice to answer our main questions. It is 
indeed necessary to consider the basis in human nature which the religion 
of loyalty possesses and to portray the relation of this religion to the 
social experience of mankind. To this task the first part of these lectures 
is confined, but such a preliminary study sends us beyond itself. 

The second part of these lectures considers the neglected philosophical 
problem of the sense in which the community and its Spirit are realities." 



PUBLISHED BY 

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New Books on Religion 
The Reformation in Germany 

By HENRY C. VEDDER, Author of "Socialism and the Ethics 
of Jesus," etc. 

Cloth, 8vo, $3.00 net 

The story of the Reformation has been retold by Dr. Vedder in the 
light of newer historical theory and the results of a generation's research 
at hand. This is the [first attempt, in the English language at least, to 
interpret the religious struggle of the sixteenth century in terms of eco- 
nomics. Founded on a careful study of the sources, the work takes due 
account of the mass of material that has accumulated, but recognizes 
also that the art of historical narration should not be secondary to the 
science of historical investigation. If the author's conclusions are ac- 
cepted, many an idol may be shattered, many a theory consigned to the 
limbo of false ideas ; but a clearer and truer appreciation of the signifi- 
cance and worth of the Reformation — what it really was and what it 
actually accomplished — should be the result. The approaching fifth 
centennial of the publication of Luther's theses makes the appearance of 
the volume most timely. 



The Faith of Japan 



By TASUKU HARADA, President of Doshisha University, 
Kyoto, Japan. 

Cloth, i2mo 

There are excellent works on the religions of Japan, but President 
Harada is the first authority to write on its faith. He expounds not 
religious systems, but those instinctive principles by which the Japanese 
live. From his people's complex religious inheritance he deftly singles 
out those elemental, ethical, and religious beliefs which have come to be 
the common property of all Japanese, no matter what their formal reli- 
gious — or irreligious — affiliations. The student of history and ethics 
will discover here fresh leads and the Christian will gladly note the new 
points of contact with the Japanese mind. Himself a Japanese, satu- 
rated both in the best indigenous and in the Christian life, as well, Dr. 
Harada is admirably fitted to interpret the faith of Japan to the 
Occident. 



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New Books on Religion 
The Battles of Peace 
The Heresy of Cain 
Christianity between Sundays 

By DEAN GEORGE HODGES, of the Episcopal Theological 
School at Cambridge, Mass., and Author of " Everyman's Religion," 
" Classbook of Old Testament History," etc. 

Each volume doth, i2?no, $1.23 net 

The following comment made by 77*,? Christian Register on one of 
these books is fairly applicable to all : " Dr. Hodges is an inspired 
apostle of the new philanthropy. These addresses are not in the con- 
ventional type of Ecclesiasticism ; they are fresh, bright, earnest, stimu- 
lating ; they are the words of a man who means business and they are 
presented with the directness and clearness of a business-like man. 
Not that they are by any means matter of fact or materialistic ; they are 
far from this. But they contain what pulpit addresses often lack — pos- 
sibilities of application so pointed and evident that they convey their 
own instruction and their own impulse." 

The volumes have already made many friends. Republished now in 
uniform binding, their appeal to Dean Hodges's many admirers and to 
all readers of religious books of popular character is bound to be 
considerable. 



The Prophets of Israel 



By MOSES BUTTENWIESER. 

Cloth, i2mo, $2.00 net 

Departing from the customary method of presentation, which focuses 
attention on the doctrinal significance of literary prophecy, this volume 
begins, with a consideration of the spiritual side of the prophetic move- 
ment. It contains an exhaustive study of the personal faith and religious 
experience of the great literary prophets as attested in their writings, of 
the nature of prophetic inspiration, and of divine revelation from the 
prophets' own point of view. It establishes the thesis that the really 
vital factor in the preaching of both the preexilic and postexilic prophets 
is their faith in the ultimate triumph of righteousness and in the subser- 
vience of present events to that end ; and from this new perspective it 
proceeds to a consideration of the doctrinal side of the prophetic move- 
ment and of the significance of the prophetic ideas in the evolution of 
religious thought. 



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Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



A Psychological Study of Religion 

By JAMES H. LEUBA, Professor of Psychology, Bryn Mawr 
College, U.S.A. 

Cloth, 8vo, $2.00 net ; postpaid, $2.16 

Professor Leuba has long been known by his researches in the psy- 
chology of religious life. His doctor's thesis (1896) on "The Psychol- 
ogy of Conversion " was the first attempt at an analysis and explanation 
of religious life from the point of view of contemporary psychology. A. 
Binet, then director of the psychological laboratory of the Sorbonne, 
Paris, called that essay "A work of unquestionable originality and great 
philosophical import." In 1904 Professor Lindley, of the University of 
Indiana, wrote of Professor Leuba's contributions: "'Epoch-making' 
is a sorely tattered word in these days. In considering all the contribu- 
tions of this author, however, one seems justified in saying that in a real 
and high sense he is a Bahnbrecher." 

This is not a work of vulgarization. The problems are attacked in an 
original manner, in many places new criticisms of old theories, and in 
others new explanations and conceptions are offered. This is particu- 
larly the case in the chapter in which Dynamism is set forth as the primi- 
tive philosophy, in the chapters on the nature and classification of magic 
and its relation to religion, on the origin of the ideas of unseen personal 
beings, on the emotions in religion, and in the long chapter in which 
the psychological foundation of contemporary theology is discussed. 

The book is not controversial, but since its author assumes squarely 
the scientific attitude and deals with problems that are vital to religion, 
it cannot fail to excite discussion, which, it is hoped, will contribute to 
a clarification of the theological situation. 

"... a notable book in its field ; one of the best. It is lucid in style 
and simple in arrangement, and presents sanely an original and highly 
suggestive analysis of the great problem. An appendix contains all the 
definitions of religion which have had any vogue or influence, a valu- 
able collection for comparative study." — Journal of Philosophy and 
Psychology. 

" No one will be able to read his book impartially without admiration 
for his plain speaking on a most important subject." — The Nation. 

" The book is suggestive ; the comments on the shifting authorities 
invoked by the theologians are just and pointed. The crucial aspects of 
unsettled problems are faced and stated honestly." — The Philosophical 
Review. 

" Sotto piu di un aspetto questa opera interessa il sociologo." — 
Rivista Italiana di Sociologia. 



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Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



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